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A sense of fair play
Page 3
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"It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British law..." Keen fans of the great detective Sherlock Holmes may recognise these lines from The Dancing Men.
Readers of CM may also think they're apt with regard to the proposed changes to the Operator Compliance Risk Score OCRS). For whatever the OCRS system is, or isn't, operators want it to be fully transparent... and fair So shoutd we welcome Vosa's plans to change the way your OCRS will be calculated?
Certainly it makes sense to base any 'traffic-light' rating on the widest possible source of data. Its also fair And while Vosa would no doubt be Loathe to admit it (for understandable reasons) those operators with a solid green OCRS rating have the closest thing to the mythical 'safe conduct pass when it comes to having their trucks stopped in a roadside check. Cr, to put it another way, it makes more enforcement sense for Vosa to stop those trucks run by operators with a red or amber rating.
Yet CM is wary of putting too much emphasis on targeted enforcement. And we oppose any reduction in the frequency of Vosa's biennial 'random' fleet compliance survey, which establishes mean figures for the industry's overall level of compliance.
Equally, before blithely accepting the latest OCRS proposals, there are some questions CM thinks should be answered. Namely what procedures exist for an operator to see or challenge their OCRS? Likewise can hauliers request an official review of their scores? Or is it always Left to Vosa to raise or lower them? While these may seem like the mutterings of a barrack room lawyer if, as has happened recently, there are requests
for OCRS data to be passed on to third parties, operators need to feel secure that whatever information is released, it reflects their true professional position. That's only fair... isn't it? Brian Weatherley