TC not told transport manager left in 1996 JOAN AITKEN,
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the traffic commissioner for Scotland, has suspended Dundee Plant Company for 12 weeks after its directors failed to tell her office that its listed transport manager left in 1996.
Following a June public inquiry (PI) in Edinburgh, the TC also ordered that director Brian Hovel formally resign as a director within seven days of her decision.
The PI was told that Hovell had initially indicated falsely in correspondence to the TC's office that the transport manager had left at the end of August 2012. In fact, the company, authorised to run seven vehicles and five trailers, had failed to employ a new transport manager when the previous post holder William Leith left 17 years ago.
A licence checklist signed by fellow director Brian Hassan in 2009 was similarly misleading because it suggested the departed transport manager was still in post.
TC Aitken said: "Hovell's behaviour is so bad, so below the standard expected of a director of a company holding an operator's licence." She had decided, "by a gossamer thread of human judgement',' that she could trust Hassan and, with a new transport manager now in place, decided not to revoke the firm's 0-licence.
The 12-week suspension will start on 31 July.
Summing up Brian Hovell accepted that he had not been honest in his initial correspondence with the TC's office, but had done it in an attempt to cover the company's tracks.