The two owners of a recycling business have each been banned from holding an O-licence for five years after being given numerous chances to run a compliant operation.
Traffic commissioner (TC) for London and the South East Nick Denton also revoked the O-licence held by Brentford, London-based partnership Jamie Adamberry and Kellie Adamberry, which traded as Talking Rubbish. The partnership operated in excess of its two-vehicle authorisation by adding trucks on to other operators’ O-licences. It also failed to provide tachograph data to the TC and lacked financial standing.
Jamie Adamberry received several convictions for driving an overweight vehicle – one of which was 24% overweight – and driving without the correct entitlement for a 7.5-tonne vehicle and Driver CPC. The operator did not inform the TC of the convictions.
Jamie Adamberry had been involved in a string of failed transport businesses before Talking Rubbish. He was a director at A&A Recycling, which went into liquidation in 2012, and his sole trader business had its O-licence curtailed in 2014 after he consistently failed to analyse drivers’ hours records. He later surrendered the sole trader O-licence.
He was also involved in another partnership that traded as Talking Rubbish, but its O-licence was revoked in September 2014 after the TC found it had failed to ensure that drivers’ hours rules were followed and had not kept vehicles fit and serviceable.
A public inquiry (PI) last month, which the operator did not attend, was told that a Talking Rubbish-liveried HGV was found to be displaying an O-licence disc issued to another operator, Brentford Commercials, in October last year. Jamie Adamberry told a DVSA examiner that he had added the vehicle onto Brentford Commercials’ O-licence as it knew it did not have permission to operate three vehicles.
Brentford Commercials also had its O-licence revoked following the PI and its director and transport manager Matthew Walsh was disqualified for three years.
A vehicle was stopped again last month displaying an O-licence disc issued to West Kensington-based Future Green Fuels Holdings, and the driver told the DVSA that he took instructions from Jamie Adamberry.
The TC concluded that the business was continuing to operate under the guise of Future Green Fuels Holdings. In his written decision last month, Denton said Jamie Adamberry’s promises of future compliance given at a PI in 2014 “turned out to be worthless”.
“He has been given many chances to run a compliant operation, instead of which he has consistently failed to make any meaningful improvement at all, and in many respects has got worse,” the TC said. He added that while Kellie Adamberry had not been as directly culpable as Jamie Adamberry, she had failed to exercise her responsibilities as an operator. “She has been exceptionally negligent in her management of the operator’s licence,” he said.
Denton said he could find “nothing positive to put in the balance” when coming to his decision.
