Decision

Decision for Jones Waste Services Ltd (OD0266401)

Published 10 February 2021

1. DECISION OF THE TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER

1.1 Jones Waste Services Ltd

1.2 Public inquiry, Birmingham, 20 January 2021

2. Background and Reasons for the Decision

The company was the subject of a maintenance investigation by DVSA in 2017: the outcome was unsatisfactory owing to a poor MOT pass rate, an ineffective driver defect reporting system and excessive gaps between safety inspections.

A second maintenance investigation in September 2020 found very large gaps between safety checks in both 2019 and 2020, some vehicles going for more than six months between inspections (the operator’s stated interval was six weeks). The vehicles were clearly in a poor condition, evidenced by the very long list of defects found at almost all safety inspections. Many of these defects were driver detectable (eg non-functioning lights, body damage etc): ie they should have been identified by drivers on their daily-walk round check and rectified straight away, rather than await the next safety inspection. Drivers are clearly failing to conduct effective walk-round checks of their vehicles. The MOT pass rate is poor (46% failure rate) and the prohibition rate at 36% is high.

Andrew Jones failed to attend the inquiry and failed to notify me of this in advance. He sent a letter via fellow director Shaun McCarron, who did attend, explaining that he had been self-isolating since February 2020. While I sympathise with his condition, this does not excuse the wholesale neglect of his transport manager duties which has clearly been the case throughout 2020. If Mr Jones was unable to carry these duties out himself (which has clearly been the case), he should either have appointed a replacement transport manager or stopped operating. In the event, the business has simply carried on with no one taking any responsibility for the maintenance and roadworthiness of vehicles.

It also emerged during the inquiry that no one has been downloading driver tachograph cards or therefore carrying out any driver’ hours analysis.

The company failed to produce satisfactory evidence of financial standing at the inquiry. Only a week’s worth of bank statements, with an average balance insufficient to support a licence of eight vehicles, was produced.

There is very little on the positive side of the balance, other than Mr McCarron’s promise to get things right from now on. But he has had since September 2020 (the DVSA maintenance investigation) to do so and there is no sign of any real improvement. The only remotely positive factor is that Mr McCarron has had an audit carried out by a transport consultant, which has made very similar findings to DVSA’s report.

3. Conclusions

Through its abject neglect of its legal duty to keep vehicles fit and serviceable and operate within the law, and in continuing to operate for almost a year without a functioning transport manager, this company has competed unfairly against those operators who employ a transport manager, maintain their vehicles properly and ensure that drivers’ hours rules are observed. The company has endangered the safety of other road users and continues to do so.

The company lacks financial standing and lacks professional competence. Revocation of the licence is therefore mandatory under Section 27(1)(a) of the 1995 Act. I note that the shortcomings noted by DVSA in 2020 repeated (and amplified) the shortcomings identified in 2017 and note that, in response, Mr Jones sent a breathtakingly complacent reply to DVSA containing assurances about maintenance standards which the maintenance records I looked at showed to be manifestly false. Consequently, I have absolutely no confidence that the company will comply in future. It deserves to go out of business.

I am revoking the company’s operator licence with effect from 0001 hours on 8 February 2021, giving less than the usual 28 days period of notice in the light of the very poor condition of its vehicles and the long-standing absence of any effective compliance management.

3.1 Transport manager disqualification

Andrew Jones, as director and transport manager, has presided over a disturbingly non-compliant operation, where undertakings regarding the frequency of safety inspections and roadworthiness of vehicles have been completely ignored. He has in effect stepped back entirely from the business while nevertheless remaining in name only as transport manager, thereby giving the (erroneous) impression that the operator remains professionally competent. The good repute of a transport manager cannot possibly survive such conduct and I therefore conclude that it is lost. That being the case, I must also disqualify Mr Jones from acting as a transport manager on any licence in the future. The disqualification is for an indefinite period of time, although Mr Jones may apply for a hearing before a traffic commissioner if he wishes to argue for the disqualification to be time-limited or cancelled.

3.2 Company and director disqualification

For the reasons outlined above, and having performed the same balancing act, I conclude that both the company and Andrew Jones should be disqualified under Section 28 from holding a licence in the future. In deciding upon the length of the disqualification, I have taken account of paragraph 100 of the Senior Traffic Commissioner’s Statutory Guidance Document 10. This posits a starting point of between one and three years for a first public inquiry (which this is). Because of the seriousness of the shortcomings, and the fact that the company appears to have learnt nothing from the unsatisfactory maintenance report it received in 2017, I am imposing a disqualification period of three years, at the upper end of the range suggested by the Senior Traffic Commissioner.

I have held back (just) from so disqualifying Shaun McCarron because he has been with the company for less than a year and was not the director primarily responsible for the company’s road transport operator’s licence. But his performance has been poor: for almost a year he has failed to identify or get to grips with the significant compliance problems which were emerging as a result of Mr Jones’s absence and negligence. If Mr McCarron ever wishes to apply for an operator licence in the future, he must first have attended an operator licence management course and have engaged the services of a competent transport manager.

Nicholas Denton

Traffic Commissioner

21 January 2021