I note the recent decisions from two Public Inquiries (PIs): A wheel loss incident involving a Scottish council SEND minibus fleet, operating 35 Section 19 permits as reported in this publication, and an operator with an O-Licence for over 50 vehicles, operating a mix of local bus services, private hire and home-to-school contracts, that has picked up five S-marked prohibitions and been heavily criticised by the Traffic Commissioner (TC) for having an in-house brake tester that was not working for a period of 10 months, along with a failure to keep robust maintenance records. The latter was reported in the press.
These two PIs have a lot of common issues running through them that we see when other operators get into difficulties. Significant failures in maintenance, record keeping, management oversight, forward planning, driver walk-round checks, and driver defect reporting systems. It’s a familiar tale we read about all too often in the trade press and local newspapers.
But what is of real concern is how an operator with a 54-vehicle O-Licence had a non-functioning brake tester for 10 months, meaning the company hadn’t a clue about the braking performance of the fleet. Or, how at a well-funded and resourced local authority that was operating a fleet of 35 minibuses — minibuses that were carrying the most vulnerable members of society under a S19 permit — the management had somehow lost focus on how such an operation should be safely run.
Both the Senior TC and the TC have rightly imposed new conditions on the O-Licences and the permits that they must adhere to. However, in these two cases, there has been no effective punishment at all. Neither have had their licences reduced or revoked (unless you count the O-Licenced operator facing a reduction of 20 vehicles for five weeks, which would, in any event, not have been in use, as the schools it would be providing transport to were on holiday).
The Office of the Traffic Commissioner is sending out the wrong message to operators and the holders of permits. What, in effect, is being said, is that the safety of the public on home-to-school and local bus service contracts comes second to the inconvenience that their removal would cause. In other words, that operator, and that LA, were too big to fail.
Conversely, should a small operator with half a dozen vehicles operating a small number of contracts face a DVSA investigation and be caught with serious failures of management and maintenance, that operator would have its licence revoked by the TC.
Do not forget that there are many operators out there that carry out to a high standard the terms and condition of the O-Licence every working day with no issues, and never see the insides of a courtroom.
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