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CI isqualified after
Page 28
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blowing Last chance
Pair to appeal against indefinite disqualification for failing to comply with lawful agency requests
KATI1ARINE OLIVER, wife of disgraced haulier Stuart Oliver, and her mother Elsie Swan, partners in Hexham-based JW Swan & Partners, have been disqualified from holding an 0-licence indefinitely by North Eastern Deputy Traffic Commissioner Beverley Bell.
Stuart Oliver was one of two partners in William Martin Oliver & Partners given prison sentences for conspiracy to falsify tachograph records (CM 24 March 2005).
In December 2006, the DTC revoked the licence for two vehicles and two trailers held by the Swan partnership after ruling it had been used for the sole purpose of allowing vehicles that were previously operated by the Oliver partnership to continue operation (CM 17 January), a decision that is under appeal to the Transport Tribunal.
Days after the revocation, the DTC saw a vehicle with a tank belonging to one of the Oliver partnership's major clients on the M6 motorway and she asked Vosa to investigate.
Evidence was given that the registered keeper of the vehicle was the Swan partnership until February and until March it was insured by the Swan partnership. The vehicle was on a finance agreement with Stuart Oliver. Enquiries of Katharine Oliver had been met with prevarication (CM 19 June).
Making the disqualification order, the DTC said Katharine Oliver sought to frustrate Vosa's enquiries at every opportunity, as well as seeking to "twistVosa's lawful activity into allegations of a personal vendetta against the Oliver family. She concluded that Katharine Oliver and Elsie Swan had no intention of establishing a proper relationship with the regulator and the enforcement agencies. The partnership had continued to display a complete contempt for Vosa in the way it dealt with its perfectly legitimate request for information.
Despite the continued illegal operation following the revocation of the licence for the Oliver partnership, she gave the Swan partnership one chance to make a fresh application and show that it could operate in a compliant manner. The two partners responded to that chance by failing to comply with lawful enforcement agency requests and now had to face the consequences.
She considered that Katharine Oliver was the driving force in the partnership, but that she was assisted throughout by her mother, Elsie Swan, who clearly knew about the use of the vehicle at the centre of Vosa's investigations.
Katharine Oliver and her mother are to appeal to the Transport Tribunal against the DTC's decision.