Fuel bill may mean final nail for farrier business

Farrier Jarvis Browning averages 125 miles a day from his home in Fadmore, North Yorkshire, and his 4x4 is now costing him an extra 40 to 60 a month.

But he says there's only so much of the cost he can pass on to clients, who are themselves hard-pressed.

"We have no choice but to pay," he said. "It's horrendous – and the same thing applies to heating oil.

"They either have to drop the VAT or the fuel duty – I don't see why we have to pay two lots of taxes on one item. It's bad enough with VAT going up 2.5 per cent.

"Something has to happen because we can't put up with this forever."

Mr Browning, 58, is one of more than 5,000 motorists to sign up to the FairFuelUK campaign headed by former haulier Peter Carroll.

Mr Carroll, who founded the campaign which forced the Government to let more Gurkhas settle in the UK, is now calling on motorists everywhere "to stand up and be counted".

The campaigner from Folkestone, Kent, is calling on the public as well as lorry drivers, road freight associations and truck manufacturers to get on board.

He told the Yorkshire Post: "The only way this campaign can win is if hundreds and thousands of people get onto the campaign website."

Mr Carroll has, however, discounted the possibility of using blockades "because it will hurt people who are already hurting enough".

He added: "Our campaign has two aims – to bin the price rise for April that's going to put another 3.5p on a litre of fuel, which can't be right in these circumstances; the second is to put in some mechanism – David Cameron calls it a price stabiliser – so we can have some clarity about how fuel prices are going in the future."

Another signatory from North Yorkshire is Andy Findlay, who runs his own cleaning company Finclean Services, a job which most days has him on the road for 30 miles.

"My feelings are if the Government keeps putting the fuel up they are just going to strangle the economy," he said.

"Everybody, not just lorry or coach drivers, needs to stand up and say 'No more, we've had enough'. Rather than putting up fuel duty they need to halve it and get us moving again.

"It's just the squeeze on my money – whatever I make is going back in the tank. You have to cut back on other things to go to work. It's completely wrong – you're supposed to go to work to enjoy life."

A new survey by the AA showed that half those polled in Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire had made a conscious decision to travel less because of the cost of fuel.

Around 35 per cent have had to cut back in other areas because of the cost – half were not eating out, 39 per cent weren't going to the cinema or theatre and 27 per cent were spending less on their weekly shop.

But there was little appetite for French-style protests – with only eight per cent prepared to join protests. Instead people were more willing to shop around for fuel (63 per cent), drive economically (48 per cent) while 22 per cent would use public transport more often.

Head of road safety Andrew Howard said a stabiliser – which would see fuel duty fall when oil prices rise and go back up when the price moderates – was a good idea but warned it would politicise the system and open it up to speculators. The most sensible approach was to scrap the next fuel duty rise in April. Other possibilities – the Government has been in talks with the European Commission over discounting fuel duty on remote communities – might help the Inner and Outer Hebrides but would not help Yorkshire.

"The groups who get forgotten are the hauliers who negotiate themselves a set contract and have no way to wriggle out of that," he said.

"You have taxis whose fares are regulated by the local authority and you have the 40p a mile voluntary drivers who are key people in North Yorkshire, who are no longer finding that 40p a mile, which was set in 2002, is adequate."

He added: "We are saying enough is enough. World oil prices are rising and it is time for the Government to take cognisance of that and abandon the next rise in taxes."

The petition can be accessed online at www.fairfueluk.com.

Wide price variations across region

The cost of fuel across the region has again soared to record levels but depending on where you live the price of filling up could hurt even more.

A Yorkshire Post survey found huge disparities in fuel prices between different areas. Data from comparison website petrolprices.com shows there is a difference of 15p between the costliest and cheapest petrol in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Here is the average price of fuel in the region's cities.

Bradford: unleaded – 126.3p, diesel – 131p; Hull: unleaded – 127p, diesel – 131.7p, Leeds: unleaded – 126.1p, diesel – 130.5p; Sheffield: unleaded – 127p, diesel – 131.2p; York, unleaded – 127.1p, diesel – 131.5p.