Traffic Commissioner Public Inquiry – Edgbaston – December 2020
Chris Powell represented a haulage company at a Traffic Commissioner’s Public Inquiry in December 2020 and helped them to retain their Operator’s Licence.
The company had been the subject of a DVSA Traffic Examiner’s Investigation in which a large number of drivers’ hours infringements were found. The investigation also found many instances of drivers driving goods vehicles without their tachograph cards inserted. Unfortunately, the company had been entirely unaware of this as it had not been keeping up to date with its tachograph analysis. There had also been instances in which drivers had driven vehicles with an expired CPC card.
Chris Powell worked closely with the company from an early stage, to investigate what had taken place and to assist them in rectifying the problems. Drivers’ hours infringements dropped significantly from a very early stage and great improvements were made in fleet compliance.
At the Public Inquiry, the Traffic Commissioner was understandably highly critical of what had taken place. As the company’s advocate however, Chris Powell was able to provide the necessary assurances that in fact the company had not received any unfair commercial advantage and that there had been no benefit to the company of drivers failing to use their tachograph cards. Indeed, the evidence showed that there was no good explanation as to why the drivers on many occasions had failed to use their cards.
Chris Powell also addressed the Commissioner on the CPC matters and was able to show that these had now largely been addressed. During the Public Inquiry evidence was also heard from the Traffic Examiner who carried out the investigation and several drivers during their driver conduct hearings.
Having heard all the evidence, the Traffic Commissioner commented that, whilst this was an extremely serious case, enough had been done to improve the position prior to the Inquiry. He therefore stepped back from revoking the company’s operator’s licence and instead imposed a short curtailment (fleet reduction) followed by a longer-term curtailment at a higher authorisation. He found that the repute of the Transport Manager was severely tarnished but crucially not lost. A number of the drivers received HGV driving licence suspensions lasting several weeks.
This was a very good outcome given the seriousness of the matters at hand and the very large number of drivers’ hours, tachograph and CPC offences. The company was given a second opportunity to show that they could get things right.
In cases of this kind, careful case preparation from an early stage and skilled advocacy at the Traffic Commissioner’s Public Inquiry hearing go an extremely long way to arriving at a positive outcome.
At Rothera Bray we have many years’ experience representing haulage companies at Public Inquiry hearings across the country. We are particularly experienced at complicated tachograph fraud cases, If you are at risk of losing your Operator’s Licence and require assistance please get in touch by phone 0115 910 6210 or email enquiries@rotherabray.co.uk