Coultons Bread, which trades as Happy Bread, has had its 15-vehicle O-licence revoked at a public inquiry (PI) after being implicated in Driver CPC card fraud.
DVSA traffic examiner Rob Williams told a PI held on 26 May that he had been on duty at a check site when David Parr, a Coultons employee based at its Bradford Happy Bread site, walked into his weighbridge facility.
Parr told him that he had initially attended a Driver CPC course run by Allied Bakeries in Stockport. The company had a team of in-house trainers and a business relationship with Coultons. It had agreed to train Coultons’ drivers as the Driver CPC deadline approached to help them meet the periodic training requirements.
However, Parr become ill and he did not attend four of the five days of training. Despite this, when he returned to work he was given his Driver CPC.
When Williams visited Allied Bakeries following the tip-off, driver assessor David Phillips admitted that no employees of Coultons had completed the periodic training and, despite this, he had signed off their training certificates.
Philips added that Lee Wadsworth, who ran Coultons’ Bradford Happy Bread site, had instructed him to do what he did.
At the PI, Allied Bakeries confirmed Phillips, Harry Hardacre and Keith Taylor had been investigated and dismissed. It argued that the fraud was limited in scope to those assessors in one week in September 2014, and had occurred without the directors’ knowledge.
Presiding traffic commissioner Kevin Rooney let Allied Bakeries off with a warning.
Howard Hunter, MD of Coultons, told the PI that he had been under the impression that Allied Bakeries would conduct his drivers’ CPC training. He added that he wasn’t aware there was an issue until the DVSA turned up.
However, Rooney said he was concerned that Lee Wadsworth and two of the other managers involved in the fraud were still in their posts, and revoked Coultons’ Happy Bread O-licence.
He added that local managers, having run out of time in September 2014, put in place the arrangements to obtain the fraudulent cards. The company’s directors allowed that to happen as they had insufficient control.
By Michael Jewell
