A plant and demolition business has seen its HGV licence suspended after its director failed to disclose convictions of health and safety offences to the Traffic Commissioner.
Birstall Demolition and Plant Services Ltd was fined £10,000 in May this year, after an incident in which a worker received burns while cutting an unsafe metal gas pipe led to an HSE prosecution.
The conviction, which occurred at a site where the company was not the main contractor, did not get notified to the Traffic Commissioner, as required under the terms of holding an HGV operator’s licence. A separate conviction of an employee who drove a vehicle with a bulging tyre was also not declared to the Commissioner.
At a public inquiry on 26 September, before North East of England Traffic Commissioner Kevin Rooney, the company’s director, Virginia Walker, said she was predominantly involved in the accounts and administration of the business, and left the transport operation to her qualified transport manager.
She admitted she was not aware of the employee’s conviction and had limited knowledge of the HSE prosecution, informing Mr Rooney that the company assumed the main contractor would make the site safe. She did not attend the subsequent court hearing and did not know what had happened to the injured employee.
After her transport manager left at short notice in March, Walker replaced him with someone who did not hold the required qualification to perform this role. Consequently, she asked her son – who did hold the relevant qualification – to carry out those duties.
In his written decision, the haulage-industry regulator described Walker’s lack of knowledge about regulated industries as staggering. “She has, by her own admission, had little to do with the transport operation,” explained Mr Rooney. “Her knowledge of the very serious incident for which her company was prosecuted by the HSE further demonstrates her lack of control and management of her business.”
During the inquiry, Mr Rooney also heard evidence from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA), which visited Birstall Demolition and Plant Services in April this year. The business had an unsatisfactory system for maintaining its fleet, the vehicle examiner reported, with vehicles not presented on time for routine safety inspections on eight occasions.
Evidence of prohibitions issued to vehicles was also presented to the Traffic Commissioner, confirming that nine mechanical defect notices had been recorded since the operator’s last appearance at public inquiry, in May 2010. At this hearing, the company had promised to undertake an independent audit of its maintenance systems, but Walker admitted it had made a decision not to carry out this undertaking – an action Mr Rooney described as compromising the trust between regulator and operator.
The Commissioner also examined the issue of two fixed penalties – one for an overloaded vehicle and one for failing to produce tachograph records recording driver duty.
Walker said any termination of the company’s licence would result in the collapse of the business. Deciding to impose a two-week licence suspension and cutting the firm’s fleet from seven to four vehicles indefinitely – under s26 of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 – Mr Rooney said Birstall Plant and Demolition had escaped full revocation of its licence “by the finest of margins”.
He noted all of the firm’s drivers had completed mandatory Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) training and accepted Walker’s commitment to undertake operator-licensing awareness training by the end of November. A transport consultant recently employed by the company confirmed that Walker was now in control of the transport operation and had appointed a new transport manager.
Mr Rooney warned Birstall Plant and Demolition that any further failure to keep its promises would be met with termination of its licence.
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A shocking lack of responsibility has been shown by the director of Birstall Demolition and Plant Services Ltd, together with complete apathy for a serious h&s inury and subsequent conviction. The company deserves to have its licence revoked and moreover, the director should be disqualified from holding a directorship in my opinion.