Award winner loses licence
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Kilsyth Transport, the winner of the Scottish International Operator of the Year 2000 Award, has had its licence revoked for hours and tachograph offences, and for employing drivers who were claiming benefits.
Scottish Traffic Commissioner Michael Betts also disqualified the company and its sole director, George Brady, from holding or obtaining an ()licence for five years. Kilsyth held a licence for 20 vehicles and 24 trailers.
Traffic examiner Evelyn Hill said an examination of the tachograph records for a single month revealed alleged offences by 26 different drivers—some 19,234km were unrecorded. Requests for details of all drivers' licences and wage records had not been fully complied with.
Brady accepted that he was primarily to blame for the hours and tachograph problems; he had taken on too much work too quickly and had overreached himself. The unrecorded mileage resulted from the use of part-time and casual drivers, said Brady, as he had difficulty in recovering tachograph charts from them.
About 30 of the casual and part-time drivers were paid cash at the end of the week and no records were kept of that, he added. Those drivers were self-employed and preferred that system of payment as they were signing on for benefits.
For the company, Michael Whiteford said the company now had a contract with a tachograph analysis agency and Brady was no longer driving.
The TC remarked: it is all very well to win an award, but would that have happened had the judges been aware that in the very month that the award was decided, the company's employees were making a complete mockery of the drivers' hours rules and that the managing director and transport manager was employing drivers who were elsewhere apparently claiming benefits?"
He pointed out that the comprehensive abuse of drivers' hours alone was enough to give the company a significant financial advantage over its competitors.
Copies of the decision and the traffic examiner's report are being passed on to the Benefits Agency.