Bolton-based Atlantic Travel (GB) has to wait to see what action, if any, Traffic Commissioner (TC) Simon Evans is to take over vehicle maintenance issues.
The company, with a 30-vehicle international licence, had been called before the TC at a Golborne Public Inquiry (PI).
For the firm, Mark Davies said that the Vehicle Examiner (VE)’s report in August 2017 suggested that prohibitions issued suggested that the driver defect reporting system was not working properly. That was not accepted by the company.
Though the list of prohibitions did not look attractive, there were explanations for a lot of them. The company was sent a warning letter and given two undertakings, to have random audits of the driver walk-round checks and to have a systems audit. There had been no prohibitions since the warning.
The TC said that the reason for the PI was that a strong warning had been issued along with the audit requirement. The initial report by Transport Consultant Grahame Robinson did not show sufficient progress had been made. Having looked at the maintenance inspection records that morning, it appeared as if the driver defects were stored up for six weeks and then dealt with at the preventative maintenance inspection.
Mr Davies said that safety critical defects reported in writing by drivers were dealt with immediately. Defects that were deemed serviceable were reported verbally to Director Yasser Dean. Before the vehicle went for inspection by the maintenance provider, Mr Dean produced a report for the provider listing the defects deemed serviceable. It was accepted that drivers should report defects deemed serviceable rather than reporting them verbally.
Mr Dean said that the Transport Manager (TM) Rehana Dean was now more hands on with the maintenance contractor. After the VE’s visit he had agreed to have vehicles roller brake tested every three months. Mr Robinson was unable to find any evidence of that in November because initially the contractor did not send the results back with the inspection sheet.
The contractor had had to replace the brake tester and there was no facility for about eight weeks. He agreed that some tests had not been done. The paperwork now came back with the sheets and the contractor had now employed a specialist PSV fitter. He was looking at perhaps changing the contractor or constructing their own purpose-built maintenance facility.
They had spent approximately £330,000 on maintenance in the last financial year and he was looking at modernising the fleet.
Rehana Dean told the TC that they had not been getting the brake test results for some time prior to the VE’s visit and she did not know why it had been such an insoluble problem. She agreed that the contractor was using HGV inspection sheets. She said she had taken in a PSV sheet and they had agreed to change to it, but it had not happened yet. She agreed with the TC that the first-time failure rate at an annual test at three times the national average was not a positive picture.
