Compliance around the industry is undoubtedly the best it has ever been. The days of ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ poor-quality operations are largely over, although depending on who one listens to, the odd example may hang on here and there.
It thus comes as something of shock to hear that a party warning of small amounts of rogue activity around some fringes of the sector is DVSA. Its Director of Operations recently told an industry gathering that the Agency still encounters unroadworthy PSVs, some grossly so.
A bald tyre on a vehicle used for a home-to-school service was utilised to illustrate that position, as was an account of an intelligence-led visit to a summer music festival that saw some easy pickings for DVSA staff.
Among vehicles encountered were two with ‘operators’; quote marks are necessary as both parties had overlooked the legal requirement to obtain an O-Licence. Yes, really.
Some of the few Public Inquiry decisions that are published in full back DVSA’s position. Not those instances where track has temporarily been lost of bus service punctuality or where an eye has been taken off the ball; the occasional ‘this is a bad one’ horror stories that end with the ultimate sanction being invoked still come forth, albeit very rarely.
The DVSA director notes how home-to-school services are of interest to the Agency. That should be a worry to all, regardless of whether they are in the industry or not. Play fast and loose with children’s safety?
Get the rogues gone and keep them gone would be the view of those to whom professional repute means something, but that the DVSA senior team member highlights that part of the sector gives food for thought.
The leverage – entirely hypothetical, of course – that local authorities sometimes might attempt to exert where a problem operator finds itself in trouble but has a number of contracts that will be difficult and expensive to place elsewhere at short notice has long been mentioned in hushed tones. Is there any mileage within it?
Regardless of whether there is or not, when the focus of local authorities is often on price – and perhaps understandably so given their frequently perilous financial positions – room for corners to be cut by the unscrupulous will always exist.
Fingers can be pointed at DVSA, the Traffic Commissioners, local authorities and the man on the moon for not tackling these problems, but does the industry’s compliant vast majority have a part to play? Perhaps so, although how that is articulated would need thought.
That aside, the frank and forthright words from one of DVSA’s top people should be taken notice of. The serially non-compliant, to coin a phrase, are still out there, albeit in tiny numbers. Regardless of that, they need to be driven out.
