Game bird rearer made wrong choice
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A Suffolk game
bird rearer com%IP mitted hours
offences after a driver who was due to doubleman a vehicle loaded with pheasants failed to turn up. When Andrew Brown, trading as Hardwick Farms, of Bury St Edmunds, appeared before Eastern Traffic Commissioner Geoffrey Simms, his Operator's Licence was suspended for six weeks.
Brown, who has a restricted licence for two vehicles, appeared before the TC at a Cambridge disciplinary inquiry.
Traffic examiner lain Gooden said that one of his colleagues had visited Brown in 1997 and reported him for hours offences, but he was not prosecuted. In 1998 the examiner found that three drivers had been used on two vehicles, both of which were said to be doublemanned, and the tachograph records were not being checked on a regular basis.
During his latest visit this year the examiner found that Brown himself had taken insufficient daily rest on three occasions and had exceeded the daily driving limit. He again reported that records were not being checked on a regular basis.
In the examiner's opinion these were serious offences affecting road safety. In reply to Michael Gotelee, for Brown, Gooden agreed that the driving had been interspersed with long periods of rest, though they did not count as statutory rest.
Brown said he could only say that he had not been tired, having had more than eight hours' rest during each of the three journeys concerned. On each occasion the vehicles had been loaded with 4,000 young pheasants worth some 120,000. Once the birds were loaded they had to be delivered, and when the second driver failed to appear he had had to carry on and make the deliveries.
Since the examiner's last visit he, his son and his partner's father had been booked on tachograph courses, and his partner's father would be put in charge of tachographs. The Road Haulage Association was now checking the charts and so far there had been no criticism.
In reply to the TC, Brown said he had held a licence since 1996. He had had no previous experience with HGVs but had had an informal meeting with the traffic examiner before obtaining the licence. The vehicles were only used between April and September, apart from the occasional private movement of a horse.
Gatelee said one of the problems with a restricted licence was that there was no requirement to have a qualified transport manager, and many such operators had to learn as they went along.
Suspending the licence, the TC said Brown had needed to make a difficult choice and had made the wrong one from an 0licensing point of view.
He felt that Brown had not appreciated the seriousness of a licence holder's obligations.