The disqualification comes after a maintenance warning in May 2013, an increasingly low prohibition rate, and MoT failures three times worse than the national average
Castleford-based M Travel and its Directors Darren Mayes and Margaret Brown were disqualified from holding or obtaining a PSV O-Licence after the company’s 26 vehicles international licence was revoked by Traffic Commissioner (TC) Kevin Rooney.
The TC also held that Transport Manager (TM) Anthony Dee had lost his repute and he disqualified him from acting as a TM until he had retaken a TM’s CPC qualification course.
The company, of Carr Wood Road, Castleford, appeared before the TC at a Leeds Public Inquiry (PI). It received a warning over maintenance issues at a PI in May 2013, and its licence was cut from 30 vehicles to 26 at a PI in September 2014.
Vehicle Examiner Dan Smith said that two vehicles had been encountered at Pontefract College. One was issued a delayed prohibition for an oil leak. The second received an ‘S’ marked immediate prohibition for a near side rear tyre with 0.88mm of tread and sidewall scuffed with body cords exposed.
The driver disclosed that he had reported it for six days previously. There was an arrangement with an external contractor, Palmers, to undertake periodic safety inspections. Palmers did not conduct repairs and he was concerned that vehicles were identified with prohibitable defects and then driven back around five miles to the operating centre for repair.
Mr Dee said that Palmers had been used as an external inspection provider to monitor in-house performance since the PI in 2013. If there was a serious defect found, M Travel staff could attend to repair it but it was accepted that vehicles were on occasion driven back with unrepaired prohibitable defects.
Mr Mayes said that a policy to change tyres at 4mm was introduced after the ‘S’ marked prohibition and subsequent fleet inspection. A newly employed transport consultancy was proposed to replace Palmers.
The TC said that an inspection report showed that a vehicle had been inspected and subject to a decelerometer brake test recording a service brake efficiency of 29%. The legal minimum was 50%, and the vehicle was signed off as roadworthy. On that inspection report, conducted several weeks after the 4mm tyre replacement policy was implemented, two tyres were recorded as having 1mm of tread.
The tyre resulting in the ‘S’ marked prohibition was very obviously and visibly in an unserviceable condition. The vehicle earlier underwent a periodic safety inspection where that tyre was recorded as having 2mm of tread. That appeared not to raise any concern on behalf of the maintenance staff, yet it was clear that the vehicle could not make it to its next safety inspection six weeks later without the tyre becoming illegal.
Alarm bells should have been ringing about that serious defect on seven occasions spanning a full fortnight before the vehicle was prohibited. That was clear evidence of a maintenance system that was not fit for purpose if, indeed, it was a maintenance system at all rather than simply a paperwork exercise. The company’s prohibition rate had worsened threefold. The MOT failure was three times worse than the national average.
