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'Dishonest' director is disqualified for year
Page 30
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Derek Graham "continued to demonstrate a disdain for compliance which bordered on the contemptuous"
AN OPERATOR who admitted lying to Vosa to cover up a driver's tachograph offences has had his licence revoked. Chadderton, Greater Manchester-based Derek Graham, trading as D Graham Freight Services, was also disqualified by North-Western Deputy Traffic Commissioner Mark Hinchliffe from holding an 0-licence in any Traffic Area for 12 months.
In September 2003 the licence of High Station, trading as Chadderton Car and Van Hire, of which Graham was the principle director, was revoked following its liquidation. In December 2004 a nine-vehicle licence was granted to Chadderton Motor Engineers of which Graham was also the principle director. That licence was suspended after the company went into liquidation as there were numerous convictions for the unauthorised use of vehicles without an 0-licence and tachograph irregularities.
The licence was subsequently revoked and Graham was granted a licence for four vehicles rather than the nine applied for, subject to a series of undertakings.
The Deputy TC said that shortly after the hearing he learned that a driver employed by Chadderton Motor Engineers, Bob Smithies, had been prosecuted by Vosa for tachograph falsification and fined £1,000.
Graham accepted that the offences had happened. He denied any complicity in the offending itself, but admitted lying to Vosa subsequently in an attempt to cover up for Smithies. He also admitted that vehicles had been operated after the suspension of the Chadderton Motor Engineers licence. He said that the undertakings in relation to driver training and maintaining a savings account had not been kept but there was plenty of money available.
A traffic examiner gave evidence that analysis of tachograph charts for January and February showed 758km missing.
The DTC said Graham was not a person that the TC could rely upon. He was not "scrupulously honest" in his dealings with Vosa, and he "continued to demonstrate a disdain for compliance which bordered on the contemptuous".
Had he known in November last year that one of Chadderton Motor Engineers's employees had been convicted of repeated tachograph falsification, undertaken in order to cover up drivers' hours offences arising as a consequence of time pressures at work, and had he known of Graham's dishonesty to Vosa to cover up his driver's conduct, he would have refused the application.
This was a bad case, the DTC added. He strongly felt that Graham needed now to take a long break from any business that required an 0-licence. •