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Transtact and Taymix: what the TC discovered

29th April 2010, Page 18
29th April 2010
Page 18
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Page 18, 29th April 2010 — Transtact and Taymix: what the TC discovered
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

CM finds out how a 'total Lack of professional competence' led to two closely connected operators losing their 0-licences last month.

Words: Roger Brown

IN A DAMNING written decision issued last month. Western Traffic Commissioner Sarah Bell revoked the 0-licences of Translact and Taymix Transport, describing them as having demonstrated a "total lack of professional competence".

Alarm hells had begun to ring about the connected businesses based in A IC Sarah BeLl Pimperne, Dorset after a Translact vehicle ploughed into a car on the A303 in Wiltshire on 2 March 2007, killing its occupants Neville and Cheryl DeAth.

IL later transpired that the truck driver, Maciej Sn.ygiecki, had been at the wheel for 16 hours without a break.

Translact and its directors were cleared of manslaughter charges in August 2009 over the crash, but the company was later fined £40,000 at Winchester Crown Court for breaches of health and safety legislation.

Loss of repute

Following a public inquiry (PI) in February, theTC found that Rory Taylor Translact transport manager and director of Taymix Transport as well as his son Robert Taylor, director of Translact, had lost their repute.

Furthermore, in a strongly worded rebuke. Bell disqualified Robert Taylor from holding an 0-licence or from being an officer of a company that holds a licence in any traffic area for eight years.

She described his conduct prior to the fatality as an "affront to the operator licensing regime': as. according to her. Robert Taylor had "actively condoned and connived" with drivers falsifying their tachograph charts over a sustained period of time and showed a "complete disregard for the law".

In January, in a separate case heard at Bournemouth Crown Court.Taylor was also convicted of handling £5,000 in counterfeit cash. The jury heard that in June 2008, he offered /20 notes to customers in exchange for coins they were putting into the change machine at the Real Time Amusement Arcade in Poole.

Taylor was handed a nine-month prison sentence, but suspended for one year,and ordered to carry out 120 hours' community service.

Bell added: "Some 14 months after a fatal accident involving a vehicle and driver employed by Translact of which he was the main director and having gone through the interview and investigation proces.s,which was ongoing in June 2008, he still saw fit to commit the serious offence of handling counterfeit money, an act of dishonesty.

-To show such a disregard of the law and enforcing authorities is most unacceptable and such an individual has no place in the operator licensing system.

Bell added that it would take a -significant period of offending-free behaviour" before Robert Taylor should be allowed to apply for an 0-licence.

'High hurdle' Bell found that while Rory Taylor and Taymix had lost their repute, she would not disqualify them, although she expressed the opinion that Rory Taylor would have a "very high hurdle to meetto persuade a TC his repute had been regained.

Although Rory Taylor had been operating vehicles for many years, in Bell's judgement he had "failed to develop his awareness and skills alongside the evolving modern operator licensing regime". She added: "I was very concerned when he told me he was relieved at the outcome of the manslaughter trial, because it meant that Translact did not 'cause' the death.

"This statement tells me that Rory Taylor did not learn a salutary lesson from the prosecution and PI process, namely, that if you do not have robust systems in place and health and safety and operator-licensing systems are wholly compatible here whether or not a tragedy happens is a matter of chance."

Bell said any systems the operator had in place for checking drivers' bouts compliance had "completely broken down" by December 2006 and that a number of drivers had failed to return charts for "long periods of time': even as long as a year in one instance.

Bell accepted that Translact and Taymix had been two separate legal entities, but closely connected because both operations had been subject to the same -systems" before the fatality in March 2007 and the

same "review process" afterwards.

The TC described as "extraordinary the system at the companies where continued to pay some drivers a sc called "good conduct" bonus despit not having handed in their tacho chart for many months (CM 25 Feb).

According to Bell, Ron: Tayle considered the return of tachographs a "no more important than othe paperwork", such as delivery slips.

She concluded; "I find this approac to compliance extraordinary In an event, the system used did not chec work undertaken but unrecorded o the tachograph chart."

According to Bell, the risk assessmer in relation to drivers' hours complianc after the tragedy had also been -wltoll inadequate". •

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