Retaining that 0 licence
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• Week by week the evidence of public inquiries shows how even well-established operators are having licences curtailed and margins eliminated for failing to maintain the statements of intent made when applying for their licence.
This is a situation which CM foresaw and has been catering for—with one-day seminars entitled "Retaining the operator's licence".
The success of these seminars has prompted a repeat performance and this is now arranged for June 10 at the Waldorf Hotel, London. The speakers will be CM's deputy editor lain Sherriff and Terry Goldrick, transport facilities manager of Allied Breweries Ltd and former FTA chief engineer.
The subjects covered will include the records. to be kept, the standards to be met, the controls to be instituted and the systems to be devised in order to avoid risking the 0 licence—especially at first renewal, when probing may be deep and searching.
The fee is £25 including coffee, lunch, tea and documents. Bookings should be made through the Conference Administrator, IPC Business and Industrial Training Ltd, 161 Fleet Street, London EC4 (Tel. 01-353 5011).
vehicles declined in number, as elsewhere, in 1970, but prosecutions were up frotn 1611 to 3532. Mr D. I. R. Muir reported that convictions had been obtained on 1149 plating and testing offences.
Many successful prosecutions had also been made possible through the system started in 1969 whereby traffic area officers provided evidence for local taxation officers. about vehicles being used without the necessary excise licence.
Mr Muir said that fleet and vehicle inspections had shown that too few small operators realized the likely consequences of failing to implement their promises about maintenance, and added: "The test will come certainly at renewal." He also found it disquieting that very many operators were handing over all regular maintenance to a garage without being sure that the garages had the resources to do all that they had undertaken. On the other hand, many new applicants, often drivers starting their own business, appeared to be competent and conscientious and although doubts had been expressed about their full understanding of the way to run a haulage business, the LA did not consider it his statutory duty to conduct a searching inquiry into such matters even if he were competent to do so.
The most striking feature of the Scottish LA's report was the improvement in vehicle condition indicated by a decrease of 24 per cent in the total GV9s issued and a decrease of 31 per cent in immediates.
This drop in defective vehicles was indeed one of the most prominent themes for the year.