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Company negleds to report driver convictions to TC
Page 23
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The Deputy TC takes no action against the two drivers concerned but suspends four of the operators' vehicles. Mike Jewell reports.
A CHESHIRE FIRM'S failure to report four-year-old convictions to the Traffic Commissioner has led to four of the vehicles it operates being suspended for four weeks.
Winsford-based Clayton Danskin and Geoffrey Dodd, trading as D&D Transport, hold a licence for 12 vehicles and 11 trailers. The company appeared before North-Western Deputy Traffic Commissioner Mark Hinchliffe at a Leeds disciplinary inquiry In February 2004 two of the lirm's drivers were convicted of various drivers' hours and tachograph offences; the partners were convicted of permitting them.
Too late for action The Deputy TC said that though these convictions were quite old they had not been notified to the Traffic Commissioner by the firm. As a result it was arguably too late to take effective action against the drivers.The system was undermined by an operator that did not keep the TC informed.
After Danskin said they had assumed the TC would automatically have been aware of the convictions, the DTC pointed out that TCs were independent from Vosa.
Asked what the effect would be if four of the firm's 11 vehicles were suspended for a month, Danskin said they would probably have to lay off a driver.
The DTC said failing to report convictions had serious consequences for the effective operation of the 0-licensing system. He ought to have been able to take action against the drivers concerned but due to the firm's failure to notify the convictions he felt it would be unfair to do so four years on.
An immediate report of the convictions would have been a strong mitigating feature which would have enabled the DTC to draw back from taking action against the fleet This was not the worst case of its kind an he was satisfied that the offences had no been a deliberate attempt to obtain an unfai advantage.
However, he needed to senr a message to the industry tha there would be no gain in failinl to report cases such as this. Then must be no incentive to keel them secret.
Not up front with TC The grounding of four opera tional vehicles for four weeks wa the consequence of not being tr front with theTC when the hour and tachograph conviction arose, he added.
Every operator ought to knoi their obligations to the Traffic Commissionc as they signed undertakings in their licene applications, one of which related to th reporting of convictions. is