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Wife of jailed haulier fails in 0-licence bid
Page 22
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Jennifer Graves did not distance herself from her disgraced husband and his "nefarious activities".
A LICENCE BID by Jennifer Graves, the wife of disgraced haulier Martin Graves, to enable her to take over an Orkney haulage business has been rejected by the Scottish Traffic Commissioner Joan Aitken.
Jennifer Graves, trading as J Holland Haulage, had applied for a national licence for five vehicles and five trailers based at two operating centres on the island of Stronsay. If her application was successful, a licence held by James Holland would be surrendered.
Martin Graves' licence was revoked in July 2003 following his conviction for manslaughter by gross negligence, for which he received a four-year prison sentence. He was also convicted of four counts of making false tachograph records. In addition, three of his drivers had each been sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for making false tachograph records.
A subsequent application by Jennifer Graves for a licence for 22 vehicles and 22 trailers was refused by the then Eastern Traffic Commissioner Geoffrey Simms after she admitted operating without a licence, aggravated by drivers' hours offences. Graves then made a further licence application, which was refused due to a lack of satisfactory evidence.
Two of her vehicles were subsequently impounded in 2007 and applications for their return refused An appeal against the first of those decisions was dismissed by the Transport Tribunal while an appeal against the second is yet to be heard.
Graves said she felt that others much worse than her had been granted 0-licences. She was now living in Stronsay, attracted by the peaceful life there, and would like to start her life again. She wanted to continue in haulage, she added, as she had been in haulage since she was a young girl — although she had never had a licence.
She said that all she had done was marry someone who was sent to prison and she had been "slated" for that. Graves had ideas how haulage between the islands could be better achieved; through using containers, she explained, it would be possible to guard against bad weather.
Refusing the application, the TC said that a person of good repute would have distanced themselves from an operation that led to manslaughter and fraud. The evidence before her fellow Traffic Commissioners showed continuing contact with Martin Graves.
Had Jennifer Graves left behind the events and associations of 2003 in 2003 and had not come to the adverse attention of Vosa traffic examiners in the interim, then it was likely that the TC would have regarded her as someone who had distanced herself from her former husband and his nefarious activities and who was seeking to use her operating knowledge to good effect. As a result, a licence could have been granted.
However, the 2003 case and the recent impoundings demonstrated that she was not such a character. III