The fact that human error is no excuse for using a vehicle when its MoT certificate has expired has been made plain by Traffic Commissioner Tim Blackmore. In issuing Newcastle upon Tyne-based based L&B Travel with a formal warning he said: “I’ve rowed back on taking regulatory action, just.”
The firm, with a four-vehicle international licence, had been called before the TC at a Leeds Public Inquiry following an unsatisfactory maintenance investigation after a vehicle examined during a school bus check on 22 November was found to have an expired MoT certificate.
The TC also issued the two Directors and Transport Managers, Lee Clydesdale and William Campbell, with a formal warning, saying they clearly wanted to get things right.
The TC said that the licence was granted in September 2015 after TC Kevin Rooney had revoked the restricted licence held by Mr Campbell and refused his application for a national licence. However, he had said that he would be prepared to grant a licence if he was with Mr Clydesdale.
Mr Clydesdale said that they had misread the date for the MoT test and made a clerical error when entering it on the forward planner.
The vehicle was booked in for test on the day of the check and it subsequently failed, so they had replaced the vehicle concerned. There were no maintenance records for that vehicle as they had gone with it when it was sold. They now realised that maintenance records had to be kept for 15 months.
The MoT problem was not intentional as they could have used a different vehicle that day. They had since brought the test dates forward on the planner, but they had difficulty in getting test dates and on occasions booked tests were cancelled.
The TC pointed out that the operating centre was only authorised for four vehicles when there were eight in possession.
Mr Clydesdale said that certain vehicles only did school contracts and were not suitable for private hire, which was why they had additional vehicles. After he said there was parking facilities for eight vehicles, the TC said they needed to make a formal request to increase the capacity to eight.
Transport Consultant Paul Elliott had been employed to show them where they were going wrong, said Mr Clydesdale. He had carried out an audit, which would be repeated every six months, and he came in one day a month, and he had recommended that they join the CPT.
They had changed maintenance contractors after issues of capacity and the completion of maintenance records.
Saying he considered Mr Elliott’s appointment appropriate, the TC said that everyone needed a mentor when they started out. There had been issues with the forward planner and they had to get it right as it ran the business and should be the centre of the operation. They also needed to regularly check driver walk-round checks as drivers could not be trusted to do it.
