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Safety net

14th July 2011, Page 23
14th July 2011
Page 23
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

For the cost of a tank of fuel a month transport lawyers Backhouse Jones’ fixed-fee service covers 100 trucks

Words: Patric Cunnane / Images: Tom Cunningham Richard Backhous e set up as a commercial lawyer in the industrial heartland that was Preston in 1825. To put the date into context, it was a full 11 years before Charles Dickens published his irst book, a collection of stories called Sketches by Boz.

More than a century later, under the stewardship of Henry Backhouse, the irm moved into transport law. The pre-war years were a fertile time for transport law with the introduction of Herbert Morrison’s 1930 Road Trafic Act, which divided the country into 13 trafic areas – 11 in England and Wales, and two in Scotland. Each area was presided over by a Trafic Area Commissioner, later known as Trafic Commissioners. The TCs were appointed on 1 January 1931 and had a statutory duty to report annually to the Ministry of Transport – a duty that continues to this day.

Backhouse Jones came into being with the appointment of Ian Jones to join family partners, brothers James and Jonathon Backhouse, toward the end of the last century.

And it is Ian Jones who welcomes CM to the irm’s light-illed ofices in Clitheroe, Lancashire.The last time CM was here, Backhouse Jones emphasised its role in providing pre-emptive advice to operators to prevent them ending up at a public inquiry or before a magistrate.

“We are still banging that drum,” says Jones, “However, the recession has changed everything. Many operators have left it until there’s a problem and we ind ourselves ire-ighting.

“The best way to avoid a problem is to prevent it. Don’t think of the TC as the devil incarnate, think of him or her as your best client, then you will be running a safe and compliant organisation.” Given that scenario, the company has introduced ‘Business Back Up’, a ixed-fee legal solution, for its HGV and PSV clients.

“We call it the Jeeves Service,” says Jones. The all-inclusive service is offered for a ixed fee per vehicle per month. There are three levels, but typically an operator with 100 vehicles would pay £15,000 a year, or around a tank of fuel a month.

Access to lawyers

For their money, operators get access to all the lawyers, whether they be transport, employment or corporate law specialists. Companies are no longer required by law to have a company secretary and the Business Back Up service can take on this role, including preparing and iling the company’s annual return; organising its AGM, and carrying out an annual audit of the books.

Clients are also entitled to a full audit of maintenance and compliance issues. “If you are called to a public inquiry, the service includes one day’s representation by a lawyer,” says Jones, adding that the irm attends up to 150 PIs a year and has six lawyers specialising in this area. Few PIs last longer than a day.

The service also includes advice on restructuring, share allotments, advice on contracts and can even provide an in-house seminar on key legal compliance issues.

Jones says the irm has remained in business by being prepared to change. “When John Backhouse died in 1998 (father of James and Jonathon), the irm had six lawyers in Blackburn.We now have a staff of 70 and turnover has increased 20-fold. In the 90s we were pigeon-holed as transport lawyers, but we have diversiied to cover all regulatory issues.” We are joined by James Backhouse and two of the irm’s transport specialists, John Heaton and Mike Pennington and the conversation turns to society’s unwillingness to accept that sometimes accidents just happen and no one’s to blame.

Backhouse says there is a particular desire to seek a prison term for a driver who has been involved in a fatality, although the same driver might get a lesser sentence if no one has died. “You should punish for the offence, not its consequences,” he says. “The offence of careless driving links the two and sees some drivers getting ined for an injury and another going to jail for a fatality for the same offence.”

A genuine accident

But blame isn’t always sought. Heaton says: “I covered an inquest where a chap fell off a roof and the family were very generous afterwards.

They accepted that it was an accident.” Pennington is interested in possible expansion of the business because of the development of the Manchester ship canal, which is opening to super tanker trafic and the attendant haulage that will bring. “Good – that means more trucks,” says Backhouse.

We talk about the new genera tion of tachographs. The EC is aiming to make them secure, but Backhouse pooh-poohs this. “There’s no such thing as a tamper-proof tachograph,” he says. “There are several problems with the digital tachograph. It compares very unfavourably with analogue tachographs when doing multi-drop work. Many sectors are reluctant to embrace it.” More imminent is the new regulation on Access to the Occupation of Road Transport Operator, which comes into force in December. The new rules limit part-time transport managers to a maximum of four operations with a total of 50 vehicles. “Operators that have problems with their transport managers will already have been called to public inquiries,” says Backhouse.

With the irm only 14 years off its 200th anniversary, Jones says its eminence over the past decade owes much to its recruitment policy. “Our whole approach has been to attract great people – there have been some fantastic lateral hires,” he declares. ■


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