M Travel’s pending appeal comes after maintenance issues caused TC Kevin Rooney to revoke the company’s licence and disqualify its Directors and TM
The Upper Tribunal has refused to grant a stay enabling Castleford-based M Travel to continue operating, pending the hearing of its appeal.
The appeal comes against the decision of Traffic Commissioner (TC) Kevin Rooney, after revoking the 26-vehicle international licence and the disqualification of the company and its Directors Darren Mayes and Margaret Brown from holding a PSV O-Licence, and the disqualification of its Transport Manager (TM) Anthony Dee from acting as a TM until he had retaken a TM’s CPC qualification course.
In his decision, 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%.
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.
Refusing to stay the decision, the Tribunal said that the grounds of appeal did not suggest that the vast majority of the basic findings of fact were wrong. The basic findings of fact could not be said to be plainly wrong on the evidence before the TC.
There was no immediately apparent error in the decision. They were not persuaded that the prospects of success were sufficient to outweigh the possible risk to staff and public safety or to fair competition if a stay was granted and if the company could not be relied upon to operate in compliance with legal requirements.
