Multiple Drivers’ Hours Offences – Operator Keeps Licence at Traffic Commissioner’s Public Inquiry

The Operator in this matter, represented at Public Inquiry by Harry Bowyer, was running a large number of vehicles on a restricted licence. The Director delegated the transport side of the business to a number of properly qualified people who he thought would be able to run the operation compliantly. In this he should have been right but owing to a rapid turnover of staff and disparate areas of authority the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing and things began to fall apart.

The matter came to a head when one of the drivers was stopped whilst driving without a card and a subsequent Traffic Examiner’s visit revealed that other drivers were routinely committing drivers’ hours offences as there was no proper system of analysis in place.

The Director took the Traffic Examiner’s visit as a wake up call. He took an Operator Licence Awareness Course and instructed a competent firm of Transport Consultants to help with analysis of his drivers’ hours. It was plain to the Traffic Commissioner that he had taken personal responsibility for the Transport side of his business before the call in letter arrived.

The Traffic Commissioner allowed the licence to continue subject to a temporary curtailment of the licence to mark the regulatory failings.