CUTTING CURTAILMENT
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• This company had to appear at a public Inquiry because a vehicle examiner reported the number of prohibitions our tippers had received and our maintenance records. The Traffic Commissioner gave a written decision and said four vehicles would be taken off the licence for four weeks with effect from the end of the month.
Does this mean the vehicles cannot go on the road at all for those four weeks? Could we hire them out to another operator to use ?
• The curtailment means the licence holder, ie your company, cannot use the four vehicles on the road during the four weeks in question for carrying goods for hire or reward or in connection with its trade or business.
The vehicles could be used:
• By your company on site work during that period as long as they did not carry goods on the public roads;
• By your company for going for repair, painting, inspection etc, as long as no goods were carried;
• By someone else to carry goods on a road for hire or reward or in connection with their business under their 0licence.
In curtailing your licence the TC could have made a direction under Section 26(6) of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 that none of the vehicles taken off the licence could be used under any other operator's licence. But in this case he did not do so.
Site work which does not involve any transport on the road might be difficult to find, and you might not wish to expose your vehicles to site damage anyway.
To minimise your losses, the best way might be to hire the vehicles out to another operator for the four weeks, as long as the other operator has capacity on his licence to accommodate them. If the drivers went wit vehicles, they would have the "servant or agent" of other licence holder fort period. This means he wc have to give them their instructions on what to di where to go.
It would also cut the ti your company if they wer employees of the other company during that peni but if they were self -empl drivers that would not be necessary—they would invoice the other operatc your company.
If you do hire out the vehicles you must make s the arrangement and pay are recorded in your ace The other operator w also have to issue and on the drivers' tachograph records and the vehicles have to be kept at his opt centre. He would also ha■ make sure the vehicles' s inspections were carried they fell due during those weeks.
A licence holder who f margin on his licence for ; vehicle and who takes it o for less than a month woL have to notify the TC that had acquired the vehicle, could specify the vehicle ; obtain an identity disc for wished to avoid the vehicl being checked by enforce officers who see it not displaying a disc.
You should also check third-party insurance pos it might be that the insurai the other licence holder in cover any vehicles used b As owner of the vehicles y company would still have. insurable interest in them your own insurance woulc cover them as long as it di exclude driving by people employed by the policyhol It is essential you makc someone's insurance coy the vehicles if they are um a road.