Significant road safety issues and aggressive intimidation of DVSA examiners have led to the virtual immediate revocation of the licence held by Caernarfon-based Tacsi Gwynedd and the disqualification of its Directors Sion and Huw Edwards and its Transport Manager (TM) Alan Owen.
The firm, with a six-vehicle national licence, had been called before Traffic Commissioner (TC) Nick Jones but failed to appear. A request to surrender the licence on 31 October had been refused.
Vehicle Examiner (VE) Ruth Kyriacos reported that an investigation was carried out after a vehicle lost a pair of wheels. Sion Edwards claimed that the tyres had only blown out, which was untrue. He subsequently avoided speaking to her or making an appointment. He had been obstructive and delayed matters.
At one visit when she was accompanied by colleagues she was physically threatened, they were blocked in by cars belonging to the family and staff, and the gates were closed.
She stated: “I will never feel safe to be with or around this operator or any of his family or personnel. It seemed like every time we visited the depot, no one knew anything, people either left the site without saying anything and the gates closed, or people arrived to intimidate us and drive us out, or lock us in.”
Four prohibitions had been issued to taxis, two of which were ‘S’ marked, and two immediate prohibitions had been issued to the buses during the fleet check, she said.
The maintenance paperwork and systems were in a dire state. Of the five assurances previously given, none had been met and there was still a lack of control and management over the drivers and their responsibilities. The annual test first time failure rate was approaching 60%.
Martin Garlick, Enforcement Manager for North Wales, said that VE Kyriacos had been clearly frightened by what had occurred. He agreed that the majority of vehicles appeared to go out in an unsafe condition.
The TC said that as recently as 14 August a minibus was given an ‘S’ marked prohibition at annual test due to a leaking brake pipe caused by severe corrosion. It came across that old vehicles were being operated that were not being properly maintained; a very dangerous combination.
Traffic Examiner Nia Daniel said that drivers were failing to complete tachograph records correctly. The fact that an audit report from Foster Tachographs in March 2016 raised the same issues as those raised by DVSA in April was alarming.
The fact that the operator had failed to act on the recommendations raised questions whether it would act on the assurances given to DVSA in 2018.
At none of the visits was the TM present.
Revoking the licence and indicating that he would be disqualifying the directors and TM, the TC said that the annual test failure rate was deplorable and road safety had been significantly jeopardised.
The firm had been running unsafe vehicles without a TM and false information had been given to DVSA about the wheel loss and the work of the TM. There had also been a clear attempt to mislead, a lack of co-operation and a deliberate attempt to intimidate DVSA officers.
It had been aware they were in difficulty and had tried to stop the investigation.
