Failing to report four-year-old convictions to the Traffic Commissioner has led to four of the vehicles operated by a Cheshire haulage firm being suspended for four weeks. Winsford-based Clayton Danskin and Geoffrey Dodd, trading as D&D Transport, holds a licence for 12 vehicles and 11 trailers. The company appeared before North Western Deputy Traffic Commissioner Mark Hinchliffe at a Leeds disciplinary inquiry.
In February 2004 two of the firm's drivers were convicted of various drivers' hours and tachograph offences the partners were convicted of permitting them. The DTC said that though these convictions were quite old they had not been notified to the Traffic Commissioner by the firm. As a result it was arguably too late to take effective action against the drivers. The system was undermined by an operator who did not keep the TC informed.
After Danskin said they had assumed the TC would automatically have been aware of the convictions, the DTC pointed out that TCs were independent from Vosa. Asked what the effect would be if four of the firm's 11 vehicles were suspended for a month, Danskin said they would probably have to lay off a driver. The DTC said failing to report convictions had serious consequences for the effective operation of the O-licensing system. He ought to have been able to take action against the drivers concerned but due to the firm's failure to notify the convictions he felt it would be unfair to do so four years on.
An immediate report of the convictions would have been a strong mitigating feature which would have enabled him to draw back from taking action against the fleet. This was not the worst case of its kind and he was satisfied that the offences had not been a deliberate attempt to obtain an unfair advantage. However, he needed to send a message to the industry that there would be no gain in failing to report cases such as this. There must be no incentive to keep them secret.
The grounding of four operational vehicles for four weeks was the consequence of not being up front with the TC when the hours and tachograph convictions arose, he added. Every operator ought to know their obligations to the Traffic Commissioner as they signed undertakings in their licence applications, one of which related to the reporting of convictions.
