The NTDA becomes incorporated – Simon Wright gives NTDA national chairman’s speech

On behalf of the NTDA executive officers and event sponsor GB Tyres (UK) Ltd, Simon Wright, NTDA national chairman welcomed delegates to the 2023 conference and highlighted a range of developments at the association including new members, the incorporation of the association, growth in React accreditation and recent lobbying success.

“On the membership front, I am very pleased to say, that the association has again attracted many new members. In fact, we welcomed 37 tyre distributors and 3 suppliers into membership.” New members included the widest range of companies “from local independent family-run tyre retailers to larger chains and from USA-based equipment suppliers to independent re-treaders…”

A very significant change for the Association was the move to become incorporated. “For 93 years, the NTDA has existed as an unincorporated not-for-profit membership body, but following a democratic process which saw the Executive Council of the Association adopt new articles of association as a company limited by guarantee, and the full tyre distributor members vote in favour of the transfer of business to the new company, we are now officially the National Tyre Distributors Association Ltd and I think I can speak for my three co-directors Martin O’Brien, Donald Carmichael and Stefan Hay when I say how proud we are to be part of this latest chapter in the history of the NTDA.”

“Externally, very little will change. The Association is exempt from having to use Ltd, so we will still be known as the National Tyre Distributors Association and continue to use…the acronym NTDA. It will still be not-for-profit. It will still be based in the same office in Aylesbury, all contact details remain the same and members will continue to benefit from the same services and benefits from the same NTDA team.”

But there have been one or two organisational changes: “We have restructured the Executive Council in order to ensure we have greater representation from all of the constituencies we now represent, whilst preserving and growing the core constituency, namely tyre distributors.”

“We have made more places available on the council for elected members from the various sub-constituencies of tyre distribution such as franchised networks and mobile tyre fitting, but also tyre wholesaling and independent retreading and therewith, we hope to attract new talent and secure the line of Executive Officer succession well into the future.”

Lobbying success

On the subject of lobbying, Wright noted a number of successes after a year of “extensive” activity in this area.

“Just a few weeks ago on 2 October, we welcomed the huge announcement from government which in its ‘Plan for Drivers’ gave details of the decision by the Secretary of State for Transport to amend the legislation to permit breakdown vehicles to be fitted with rear-facing red flashing lamps when recovering broken-down vehicles and responding to incidents on GB roads.”

In response, Wright personally thanked those at the forefront of efforts and invited members and delegates to join him in a round of applause: “The NTDA has campaigned for this change for many years and as [chief executive] Stefan [Hay] said at the time, this has been a long and often frustrating battle and the Professional Recovery Operators Federation chairman Richard Goddard, who spoke at the 2019 NTDA Tyre Industry Conference on this matter, Derek Firminger of European Rescue and Recovery Initiative and Paul Gregory of Professional Recovery Magazine, have been phenomenal allies and inspirational leaders in this campaign…”

In March, the NTDA, as one of only 12 professional bodies to respond to the consultation, welcomed the announcement by Northern Ireland’s Vehicle Policy Unit at the Department for Infrastructure that following the results of the consultation, it was banning tyres aged 10 years and older on the front axles of HGV’s, buses and coaches, and to the tyres on all axles of minibuses when fitted in single configuration. The changes implemented in Northern Ireland aligned with the changes introduced in GB on 1 February 2021.

2023 has already been another year of positive partnership events. For example, the NTDA supported Automechanika Birmingham event at the NEC which saw record attendance numbers and which, from an NTDA perspective, was highly successful in that we attracted several new members, generally caught up with many existing members and other tyre trade colleagues and were able to extensively promote the Tyre Technician Professional Development Scheme.

“The scheme, and the professional licensing it delivers, remains a cornerstone of NTDA activity and I am delighted to announce this year that more than 9,500 commercial tyre technicians have now been trained, assessed as competent and issued with a REACT licence”, Wright continued, adding:

“Over 2500 commercial tyre technicians have been trained, or re-trained, assessed as competent and issued with an NTDA Commercial Tyre Technician licence and more than 200 technicians have now been issued with the NTDA Retail Tyre Technician licence.”

In addition, the Responsible Tyre Repair Technician licence has been issued to 225 technicians and the first Licensed Mobile Tyre Technician courses have been run the association is already starting to get application batches through.

Wright concluded by saying: “I am both proud and honoured to have served as NTDA National Chairman for the past two years and would encourage you, my fellow members, to get more involved, who knows? In a couple of years’ time, it could be you up here!”

See December’s edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine for further coverage from the conference.

As well as seminar-style speeches, the conference offered Q&A sessions across all topics (Photo: NTDA)