A convicted waste offender who applied for an O-licence has been turned down. Giles Graham Detheridge appeared before West Midlands traffic commissioner (TC) Nick Denton (pictured) in the summer but the TC’s written decision was only published at the end of October.
One of the reasons the licence application was thrown out was that Detheridge’s sentence was not yet “spent” - the legal term for the time after which a sentence can be ignored. Denton wrote that Detheridge had noted on his application form that he was convicted in June 2016 for operating a waste site without a permit and was sentenced to six months in prison.
He added: “He further noted that this ‘conviction is now spent’ although in fact it does not become spent until 11 December. Detheridge, together with his business partner Ronald Calder had rented the site from John Bruce, a man with a record of multiple convictions and imprisonment for dumping contaminated waste.” When Detheridge was asked why he had declared his conviction as spent when it was not he replied he had used the word only in the sense that he had completed his prison sentence.
Denton, who said he was concerned at the application, asked Detheridge about his work and finances. Asked to account for two payments in June from Hudsons Grab Waste totalling more than £2,500 he could not recall what they were for. “Detheridge did not give me the impression at the PI as someone in whom I could place the trust that a TC extends to an operator.”
Denton added that not only did Detheridge have no explanation for the money that had gone into his account but “he had not brought to the inquiry any of the documentation relating to his intended maintenance and drivers’ hours compliance systems which I had requested”. “Overall I conclude that, at the current time, because of his serious conviction and because of his dissembling at the inquiry, Detheridge is not a fit person to hold a goods vehicle operator’s licence.
"Nor does he have satisfactory arrangements in place to ensure that drivers’ hours rules are observed or that vehicles are kept in a fit and serviceable condition. The application is therefore refused.”
