A construction firm with a licence to run two HGVs has had it revoked after the director admitted an audit had not been carried out because he was “not very good with dates”.
JT Construction (NE) in Bishop Auckland had its original application to run lorries scrutinised at a public inquiry (PI)due to director Towson Smith’s connection to previous business JT Construction, which received two warnings for maintenance problems before its licence was revoked in July 2021.
The licence for (NE) was eventually granted, but the deputy traffic commissioner (TC) instructed it to have an independent compliance audit carried out.
The audit was submitted to the TC and it reported “serious and widespread non-compliance”, with 83 recommendations specified.
Issues identified included using an unauthorised operating centre, vehicles not being specified on the licence, no brake tests of any kind being carried out and no equipment being available to download driver tacho cards.
The TC’s office wrote to the operator requiring it to apply for the new operating centre and requesting proposals on how it intended to deal with all of the audit’s recommendations. No reply was received and so a PI in Leeds was scheduled before TC Nick Denton.
In his written decision, Denton said: “I asked Mr Smith why he had failed to meet the deadline for the audit set out in the undertaking, especially after deputy TC Evans had made clear in his public inquiry decision that he attached importance to the audit.
“Mr Smith said that the deadline had simply slipped by: he was not very good with dates.”
Evans said he carried out a balancing exercise on the operator and on the negative side he found the operator had failed to carry out the audit on time, and used an unauthorised operating centre, as well as the serious shortcomings both on maintenance and drivers’ hours identified in the eventual audit.
“I could find very little on the positive side of the balance other than Mr Smith’s honesty in accepting that there was no excuse for his failures,” Evans said.
He revoked the licence and disqualified the operator and director for 12 months: “Very much at the lighter end of the scale,” the TC added.
