Warning light for Amber
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I A Blackwood company had its licence suspended for four days, and the authorisation reduced, when it appeared at its fourth public inquiry before South Wales Traffic Commissioner John Mervyn Pugh.
In ordering the suspension. and cutting the authorisation from 24 to 16 vehicles, Pugh said that Amber Engineering should be thankful it had not lost its licence altogether.
For the company, Andrew Childs said it recognised that its drivers had been at fault in not reporting defects and steps had been taken to rectify the situation. The Freight Transport Association was employed to carry out inspections and there had been no prohibitions imposed on the company's vehicles since February Transport manager Jason Jones said that the FTA carried out the inspections and the company then undertook repairs.
Jeffrey Lannan, the FTA's assistant engineer, said they had been inspecting the vehicles every four weeks since last June. He accepted that since then five prohibitions had been imposed on the company's vehicles, two of which showed significant maintenance failure.
Pugh said that the company had failed to heed advice to put all its vehicles through fresh annual tests before the hearing.
He warned that if similar problems occurred again he would revoke the licence.