A waste management company that was described as “amateur” and “neglectful” by traffic commissioner (TC) Joan Aitken has had its O-licence authorisation halved for four months.
DWC Waste Management, which trades as Dirty Work Clearances, was found to have committed a number of offences including operating from an unauthorised site and running a vehicle that had no MoT. It had its O-licence reduced from two vehicles to one, for four months from 28 February, after the DVSA found its systems were “in disarray”.
Director Andrew Lindsay admitted he played no part in the day-to-day running of the Edinburgh-based business and left responsibility to his son Julian Lindsay, who had no experience of running HGVs.
A public inquiry (PI) in January was told the tipper operator relied on drivers to take vehicles to their preventative maintenance inspections, which often resulted in inspections not being carried out.
The DVSA began investigating the operator in August 2016 following the issue of a delayed prohibition for braking defects. The truck was found to have been out of test. An examiner discovered its vehicles had a 100% fail rate at annual test and the contractor, specified on its O-licence, was not being used. Records were not being archived properly.
The business had been running trucks from an unauthorised operating centre, having relocated and not informing the Office of the Traffic Commissioner.
Andrew Lindsay told the PI he had been left the business in his father’s will, but had not been able to commit the time to running it. He accepted there had been a lack of management control and said employing his son, a former estate agent, to manage the business had been an error. He claimed its failure to put its truck through the MoT test on time had been a genuine mistake.
Julian Lindsay admitted he had relied on employees who had 10-15 years experience in the industry to undertake some of his responsibilities as an operator, and had agreed to step down following the PI.
The company was unable to demonstrate it had the financial standing for the two vehicles it wished to run, but met the financial requirement for one truck.
The company agreed to recruit someone with more experience in the transport industry, put new systems in place, and appoint a new transport manager.
TC Joan Aitken said: "The operation had moved and had not been authorised through a variation and the examiner had the inconvenience of having gone to an operating centre no longer in use. All in all the husbanding of the licence undertakings was amateurish and neglectful. I am not in the slightest doubt that such an amateur, neglectful approach would have persisted but for the DVSA’s intervention.
“The removal of the curtailment will require the clearest of financial resources and proactive demonstrable compliance with the licence undertakings.”
