Time for the hit squad
Page 6
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
RAFFIC AREA enforcement teams are no longer doing the job that they were created to do. This has become increasingly obvious. There is now a dire need for the formation of some sort of "serious crimes squad" to combat those who deliberately set out to circumvent transport legislation.
Previous criticism's of the Department of Transport's enforcement policy in Enforcement Commentary has been reinforced by the scathing criticism contained in the Palmer Review. The major failing is the concentration on overloading, almost to the exclusion of anything else.
Minimum targets in relation to numbers of vehicles weighed have been set. That has led to the nonsensical situation, in at least one traffic area, of traffic examiners weighing empty vehicles purely in order to achieve the target figures.
One can understand the idea of setting targets in an effort to achieve efficiency. However, the basic problem is: • By what yardstick should enforcement be judged?
• Setting particular target figures encourages enforcement officers to go for the easy option.
• Evidence exists that traffic examiners in certain traffic areas have been instructed to back off from cases involving large complicated investigations.
Indeed, it is rumoured that questions have been asked about why it was necessary to take a recent case involving the deliberate and systematic fraudulent registration of vehicles at the wrong unladen weight to the Crown Court?
If that is right, then any pretence at credible enforcement by the DTp becomes a joke.
The Department's National Enforcement Plan has created a climate in which the effectiveness of a traffic area's enforcement effort is judged on a league-table basis. The flaw in the system is that a mammoth tachograph investigation, taking many months, counts the same as a simple overloading case. The aim is value for money. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to produce a criteria for judging value for money in regard to enforcement because it is impossible to judge objectively the effect of particular policies and actions by enforcement agencies.
Effective enforcement means the rooting out of the unscrupulous few. The operator who complies with the law, and the public at large, have to be protected from those who deliberately flout the drivers' hours and tachograph rules, the licensing system, and the vehicle taxation system, in order to cut corners. If that protection is not there, the temptation to follow suit in order to remain competitive is strong, particularly if livelihoods are at stake. In the words of a Crown Court judge in a case recently before the courts, if companies keep a competitive edge by such means, it is up to the courts to deprive them of that edge. For the courts to be able to do that, the enforcement agencies must have already done their job.
Budgetary controls are necessary in any field, but it is necessary to be flexible when dealing with enforcement. Just 12 months ago there was the crazy situation when one traffic area had to stop prosecuting because it had overspent its enforcement budget in that particular financial year. That makes a nonsense of the whole idea of enforcement.
Whatever the reasons for that overspending, whether it is inefficiency or that perhaps the traffic area concerned mounted a number of more expensive major prosecutions than usual, it cannot be right that offenders escape justice purely because of budgetary controls.
It is not being suggested that the Department should not continue to enforce the weight regulations. However, major resources and effort need to be directed at winkling out the "cowboys". Much has been done by various police forces over the past three years or so. They have stepped into the vacuum created by the National Enforcement Plan. Most of the major prosecutions during that period having been mounted by the police. However, the police have other things to occupy their time. They really ought not to be getting heavily involved in a field where there is already a specialised enforcement agency. It is the traffic examiner force which has the experience and which ought to be devoting time to such cases.
The way forward is the formation of a "serious crimes squad" in each traffic area, consisting of experienced senior traffic examiners, whose remit would be major investigations on the scale of the Charter Roadways and Trathens tachograph cases. One such case successful ly brought to a conclusion, is more effective enforcement than hundreds of convictions for the absolute offence of overloading, committed often enough through no fault of the operator concerned.
Even where convictions might be hard to achieve, it is often just as much a deterrent to prosecute. Though obviously prosecutions ought not to be brought where the chance of success can be said to be almost non-existent, not to prosecute at all will do more to encourage others to commit offences than will a number of unsuccessful cases.
Palmer speaks of the current low morale among traffic examiners, something indeed his suggested amalgamation with the Department's Vehicle Inspectorate had done nothing to dispel. They believe that they are being prevented from "enforcing" by current policies. They are not allowed to dig into situations they know full well require investigations. They see complex and time-consuming investigations handed aver to the police, who are often less experienced in knowing what to look for.
• The creation of a "serious crimes squad", provided it is given adequate resources to do the job properly, would boost morale overnight.
• Enforcement staff would believe that they were doing something worthwhile, but I submit, it would doubtless become the ambition of almost every traffic examiner to become part of such a squad.
Unless something along these lines is implemented, the very good relationship built up over the years between traffic area enforcement staff and the industry at large will be eroded. The good operator is going to be hammered again and again for the type of offence that cannot be avoided by anyone running commercial vehicles, while those who set out to disregard safety, and seek to hide what they are doing, are going to continue to get away with it. Whatever criteria enforcement is judged by, such a situation is not "good enforcement".
Unfortunately, teething problems may occur following the merger of the traffic examiner force with the Vehicle Inspectorate. Will the new agency prove more effective? Only time will tell, but the portents are not good.