Are you interested in historic vehicles?

Liveryman Geoff Lancaster is Director of The Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. He is keen to update Liverymen who own, or are interested in, historic vehicles about the club, which exists to protect the rights of its members to use their historic vehicles on the highway.

The Federation currently represents 555 historic vehicle clubs in addition to museums, trade and individual supporters. Collectively it represents more than 250,000 historic vehicle enthusiasts, looking after all vehicles propelled by their own means, embracing cars, motorcycles, buses, coaches, all commercial vehicles, military, agricultural and steam vehicles.
In the early years the Federation was a lobbying organisation and focused primarily on legislation and similar matters but more recently it has followed a strategic plan, which delivers a holistic approach to representing all vehicles more than 30 years old. The key elements embrace legislation, research, trade and skills, events, international relations and the heritage agenda.
Legislation is fundamental to the Federation’s existence and it is extremely well connected in both Houses of Parliament and with relevant governmental and non-governmental agencies such as DfT, DVLA, DVSA, TfL etc.

The Federation is well known for its ‘state of the nation’ research conducted every five years. The most recent findings, published in 2016, valued the UK historic vehicle movement at £5.5bn and employing 34,900 people.

Of course, it is well known the preservation of key skills is fundamental to maintaining our vehicles and in 2014 the Federation launched the only Ofqual accredited apprenticeship in historic vehicle restoration. The Department for Education is now delivering apprenticeship programmes through its Trailblazer programme and the Federation is leading an application for a course as a forerunner to the Heritage Engineering Apprenticeship. This has wider scope than just historic vehicles and embraces steam, aviation and marine too.

The heritage agenda is our key development area in the next five years as we establish ‘mobile heritage’ as having equal significance to our cultural environment as buildings and the like. The Federation is contributing to the work of The Heritage Alliance and seeking other relationships with prominent national heritage organisations.

The Board of Directors and team members number more than 30 people, all of whom are volunteers with the single exception of our Secretary, Emma Balaam. Membership of the Federation is available to clubs at an annual per capita fee of 46p per member owning a historic vehicle.
Further information is available at: www.fbhvc.co.uk