Firm linked to lorry migrant tragedy wins fight over unfair trailer fee after Lancashire seizure

It comes after the discovery of 32 pallets of “mixed alcoholic beer”, made up of 25,488 litres, that had been “mis-manifested as frozen ready meals”, court papers show.

Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.

When Border Force officials ordered Global Trailer Rentals (GTR) to hand over cash for the return of a trailer that was stopped in Lancashire and found to contain beer and not, as was claimed, frozen meals, the firm thought it a little unfair.

They were, after all, just a firm that leases out trailers and had historically done everything they could to comply with police investigations when they happen.

Today’s edition tells the story of the legal row and the history behind it.

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Lancashire briefing

🏥 The purchase of the final part of the preferred site for a new Royal Preston Hospital was made possible after the government released funding that had first been committed when the facility was set to be built far sooner. Local NHS leaders announced last week that they had acquired the provisional plot – off Stanifield Lane in the Farington area of South Ribble – for a hospital whose doors are not expected to open until the early-mid 2040s. The first tranche of land needed for the new-build was bought in late 2024, at which point construction work was expected to begin in 2030 and be completed by the middle of that decade. However, when that deal was done, the timeframe for building the facility had already been put under review by the new Labour government, which had accused its Conservative predecessors of failing to fund a commitment to a claimed “40 new hospitals” nationwide – of which the Royal Preston was one. In January 2025, health secretary Wes Streeting announced that the start date for the scheme had been pushed back to between 2037 and 2039 – meaning the new hospital would not be treating patients for the best part of 20 years. However, the NHS was nevertheless permitted to draw down the finance to secure the remaining part of the 64-acre site last month.

🐴 Progress on building the Eden Project Morecambe has taken a ‘major leap forward’ with the appointment of a company for the next phase of work, bosses say. VINCI Building has been announced as the main contractor for the next stage of design development and construction at the Morecambe site. It follows planning approval being granted in February for a revised Eden design, featuring two main shell-shaped domes, gardens, sea walls and a ’causeway’ entrance. The first phase of work is expected to be 1.5 acres of landscaped gardens, due to open in early 2027, ahead of the site’s full opening in 2028. In a new announcement, the Eden Project said VINCI Building has extensive experience in delivering complex, large-scale projects. With strong technical capability across constrained and challenging environments, the company will bring ‘engineering expertise, rigorous planning and collaborative delivery’ for quality and safety, Eden bosses said. VINCI was appointed through a competitive tender process using the North West Construction Hub, which raises awareness of council and public sector contracts to building companies which might want to submit bids

🕳️ A motorbike-riding councillor from Chorley has warned that the number of potholes on Lancashire’s roads is putting the lives of two-wheeled travellers like him at risk. Cllr Matthew Lynch says bikers are uniquely vulnerable to crumbling carriageways – and the depth of many of the defects found on them – in ways that other road users are not. The Labour councillor, who represents the Chorley North West ward on Chorley Council, is not without sympathy for highways bosses at Reform UK-run Lancashire County Council, because of the difficulty he acknowledges they face in prioritising repairs. However, he believes the authority could be doing a far better job – and says the contrast on his regular journeys across the border into the separate Blackburn with Darwen Council area is stark. The county council expects to spend at least £28m fixing potholes that appear during the course of the 2026/27 financial year. A further £21m has been set aside for pre-planned resurfacing projects across more than 100 routes selected for ordinary maintenance.

Firm linked to lorry migrant tragedy wins fight over unfair trailer fee after Lancashire seizure

Heysham Port. Credit: Robin Drayton

By Michael Holmes

A trailer rental firm inadvertently caught up in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants was told to pay a four-figure sum to get back a trailer seized in Lancashire for having an illicit load of booze - with the tragedy wrongly brought up, a court has ruled.

Border Force officials ordered Global Trailer Rentals (GTR) to hand over £1,000 for the return of a refrigerated trailer that was stopped at Heysham and found to contain more than 25,000 litres of beer and not, as was claimed, frozen meals.

But the firm, which leases out almost 200 trailers, has successfully argued at a tribunal that the finding was unfair - especially as its co-operation with authorities after the 2019 atrocity in Essex led to the prosecution of those responsible.

GTR contacted Essex police directly to give them information about the person and the company leasing the trailer, media reports from the time say.

And it pledged to hand over data from its tracking system, with bosses saying they were “shellshocked” at the news and “gutted” one of their vehicles was used in that way.

It did not respond to a request for a comment from The Lancashire Lead.