Decision

Decision for Top Lane Haulage Ltd and Sukhraj Singh

Published 8 March 2024

0.1 IN THE EASTERN TRAFFIC AREA

1. TOP LANE HAULAGE LTD - OF2052117 AND

2. SUKHRAJ SINGH - TRANSPORT MANAGER

3. WRITTEN DECISION OF THE DEPUTY TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER

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4. Background

This operator holds a standard international licence authorising 5 vehicles and 5 trailers. The Director is Sukhraj Singh, who is also the Transport Manager.

5. The Hearing

Attending Public Inquiry on 7th February 2024 was Sukhraj Singh, Director and Transport Manager and Zacchaeus Felix, Driver. Transport Consultant, Amrit Aggarwal, attended to assist but not represent the operator. I was told that he is to be engaged as a consultant going forward.

6. Issues

The case was called under Section 26, 27 and Section 28 of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 and specifically:

• Section 26(1)(b) – breach of licence condition(s).

• Section 26 (1)(c) (iii) – prohibition(s).

• Section 26(1)(e) – statements made when applying for the licence were either false or have not been fulfilled.

• Section 26(1)(f) – undertakings have not been fulfilled.

• Section 26(1)(h) – material changes.

• Section 27(1) – whether the operator is of good repute, of the appropriate financial standing and professionally competent.

• Section 28 – consideration of disqualification in the event of revocation.

• Schedule 3 –and professional competence.

The Transport Manager, Sukhraj Singh, is called under Section 27 and Schedule 3 of the Act, to consider his repute.

Prior to the hearing I was provided with financial evidence which demonstrated that the operator lacked sufficient finance to demonstrate financial standing. A period of grace was requested at the hearing.

7. Evidence

On 7th December 2022, one of the operator’s vehicles, X99SSP was stopped by Traffic Examiner (TE) Zoe Fielding at a DVSA check site in Cambridgeshire. The driver was Mr Zacchaeus Sedrak Felix. The ministry plate displayed was KX15NYH, not the current registration mark of X99SSP. An offence rectification notice was issued for it to be changed in 21 days. A weight prohibition notice was also issued on the same day.

TE Fielding downloaded 28 days of data for the vehicle unit data and driver card data. She found that there was no history of downloads, and that the company had not downloaded any data since it first locked into the vehicle on 9th August 2022. Further analysis revealed that Mr Felix had potentially been driving without a card on 5th December 2022.

At finding this, TE Fielding completed a full download of the vehicle’s data. The data revealed that Mr Felix had potentially driven X99SSP without a valid card on 19 occasions between August and December 2022.

Mr Felix was interviewed under caution by TE Fielding and TE Neill Gardener. He admitted to consciously and knowingly removing his driver card to make a false record and stated that most of the offences were committed as he was rushing to pick his child up from school.

A follow up investigation was carried out by TE Ranjeev Jassal, who completed a Traffic Examiner Visit Report (TEVR) dated 23rd March 2023. TE Jassal also conducted an interview under caution with the operator’s director, Sukhraj Singh. The TEVR result was ‘unsatisfactory’. The shortcomings included:

• Drivers’ hours/record keeping - Concern that ClockWatch (the system the company uses to download tachograph data) did not have the capacity to provide a missing mileage report as it was not built into the system. As such, the operator was not aware of missing mileage and assumed drivers were adhering to the rules.

• Working time directive – Concern that the operator missed the 19 instances of a driver intentionally pulling his card from August to December 2022.

• TE Jassal wrote in the report that “the driver Mr Felix was given the relevant information at the outset and that removing his card whilst driving and compromising road safety was an action that he took on his own accord and that the Operator was not aware he was doing this”.

• The report notes that after the DVSA encounter on 7th December 2022, the operator conducted a Toolbox Talk about driving without a driver card to all its drivers and Mr Felix was dismissed.

• TE Jassal stated that the “Operator has now put measure in places, which are satisfactory and I have been informed that Mr Naveen Kumar will be employed as the Transport Manager and that Mr Adams as a Transport Consultant will also be engaged”.

The DVSA evidence was not disputed so I have taken it as read. I was provided with an updated report from TE Jassal dated 31st January 2024. This identified 28 infringements and 169 instances of driving without a card over 5 minutes (129 instances over 10 minutes) between 7th February 2023 and 21st December 2023.

7.1 Driver Felix

I heard evidence from Mr Felix. In summary:

• He had been driving for who he thought was Top Lane Haulage Ltd since January 2022.

• He had been given the job after speaking with someone called ‘Duchy’ from ‘Duchy Transport’ who had put him in touch with ‘Jas’.

• We identified during the hearing that ‘Jas’ was Jaspreet Singh, Mr Singh’s father. Mr Felix had never met Mr Singh prior to the Public Inquiry.

• ‘Jas’ gave him a job, but he didn’t complete any paperwork, nor did he have an induction. It transpired that he was first paid by R&J Transport PVT Ltd and then (the evidence would suggest from summer 2022) Top Lane Haulage Ltd. A far as Mr Felix was concerned, nothing changed between the two; he received his instructions from ‘Jas’ or ‘Duchy’.

• He admitted to ‘pulling his card’ on 19 occasions and reiterated that it was due to his son having come over from St Lucia. I was told that he was unsettled and very upset if Mr Felix was late to collect him, so he pulled the card to be on time.

• He indicated that this had never been picked up by the operator.

• When asked about pages 230 to 232 of the bundle (records which purported to be signed by him and in respect of one, countersigned by Sukhraj Singh, in August 2022, and to demonstrate that he had received a comprehensive induction – as identified by DVSA s at paragraph 10(iii) above), he told me he did not receive an induction, nor any training and these were not genuine records.

• After the DVSA stop he was told he wouldn’t be needed (although was never officially dismissed) and was then, sometime later, asked to meet ‘Jas’ in a layby and sign these pieces of paper.

7.2 Sukhinder Singh

Sukhinder Singh admitted in evidence that he had held these documents out to DVSA as true records, but they were false. He said he had filled in the dates and signed the relevant areas after the DVSA stop.

He also gave evidence that after the DVSA investigation he did not employ Mr Naveen Kumar as Transport Manager and Mr Adams as a Transport Consultant, despite what he told TE Jassal. He explained that they had “lost interest” in helping out.

I was told that Sukhraj Singh and his uncle, Ravinder Kamal, had bought Top Lane Haulage Ltd in the summer of 2022 and shortly prior to that, his father’s business R&J Transport PVT Ltd had its operator licence revoked.  Mr Singh stated that he was unaware of what happened to his father’s licence. I find this explanation to be extremely unlikely and concerning; if he genuinely was not aware then he should have made himself aware, as an operator. A check of VOL by my clerk during the hearing confirmed that the operator’s licence issued to R&J Transport PVT Ltd had been revoked on 11th July 2022 and the operator and Jaspreet Singh (Jas) disqualified from holding an operator’s licence.

Mr Singh stated that after he was made director on the licence in May 2022, he did not know, and had never met, the Transport Manager nominated on the licence. He did not nominate himself as Transport Manager until August 2022.  He claimed that during that time Top Lane Haulage was not operating.

In respect of his father, Jaspreet Singh’s, role in this business, Sukhraj Singh told me that he mentored and helped him out at first but now has stepped back. I was told that if not given in person, instructions were given to drivers via a text group comprising drivers, Jaspreet Singh and Sukhraj Singh. Mr Felix stated that only Jas or Duchy gave him instructions; he had never met Sukhraj Singh. I consider that Mr Singh attempted to mislead me as to the extent of his father’s role in this operation.

I was told that this operator purchased vehicles from R&J Transport PVT Ltd; albeit this evidence was not forthcoming from Sukhraj Singh; at first, he told me that he bought the vehicles through his accountant. His explanation for the change in his evidence was that he misunderstood my question. I do not consider this to be a credible explanation and find that again he attempted to mislead me, to distance this operation from his father’s revoked operation.

8. Findings

I note and prefer the evidence of Mr Felix. I found that operations continued seamlessly; when overlaying the revocation of R&J Transport PVT, the picture is a clear one. This operator’s licence was used as a device to continue that operation. This was supported by what I was told by Mr Singh, that they looked around to find a transport business to buy and found Top Lane Haulage through their accountant.  

Throughout his evidence Sukhraj Singh lacked in-depth knowledge of the running of the business. He accepted that tachographs were not analysed at all prior to the DVSA stop, due to a problem with their ClockWatch system. He explained to me that drivers’ hours were not his area of specialism, but that he focused on maintenance. When we then discussed maintenance, he lacked the depth of knowledge I would expect from both an operator and Transport Manager. For example, he had failed to pick up on the fact that a RBT was insufficiently laden, nor that PMI’s were showing driver detectable defects.

I conclude that Top Lane Haulage Ltd was bought to continue the business of Jaspreet Singh and that he exercised control over Top Lane Haulage (in contravention of his disqualification), which was an operation set up to take over the work of R&J Transport PVT Ltd.

Sukhraj Singh has been dishonest with DVSA as part of their criminal investigation into serious offences and was less than honest with me at Public Inquiry.

9. Decision

Based on the evidence summarised above, I make adverse findings under section 26(1)(b), (c)(iii) (e) and (f) and (h) in respect of this operator.

I find that this operator lacks financial standing. I do not consider it appropriate to grant of period of grace in respect of finance, given my findings.

I started with the question posed by the Upper Tribunal in 2009/225 Priority Freight namely: how likely is it that this operator will, in future, operate in compliance with the operator’s licensing regime?  On the question of trust, paragraph 61 of the Senior Traffic Commissioner Statutory Document No. 1 reminds me of the relevant case law when it states:

“All operators have a positive duty to co-operate with the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and the traffic commissioner. Any attempt to deceive a traffic commissioner is serious conduct which cannot be condoned, particularly where an operator and/or applicant relies on a document that has been altered so that it might mislead a traffic commissioner. Similarly, operators who deliberately deceive and present false evidence to traffic commissioners, either in correspondence or at public inquiry, are also liable to prosecution through the criminal courts and are likely in serious cases to receive a custodial sentence.”

It was only because of the frank evidence from Mr Felix that I was made aware of the falsification of records produced by this operator to DVSA. I note that the DVSA relied on these documents in making enforcement decisions in this case (quote at paragraph 10 above). Moreover, I conclude that Mr Singh attempted to mislead me on several occasions at Public Inquiry to distance this operation from his father’s revoked licence. This is not an operator that holds good repute, nor that can be trusted.

In respect of Mr Singh’s position as Transport Manager I find that he lacks repute as a Transport Manager; both in respect of his obligation to continuously and effectively manage the transport operation and his attempts to deliberately mislead a DVSA Examiner. This is conduct not becoming of the professional role of Transport Manager. He is unable to rely on his certificate of professional competence and is disqualified from doing so indefinitely. I struggle to identify a rehabilitation measure that will remediate the dishonesty he has shown and so do not set one.

In the absence of financial standing and a Transport Manager, the balancing exercise is a hypothetical one, as is my consideration of impact of regulatory action. However, for completeness, I consider that this case falls within the serious to severe bracket in Annex 4 of Statutory Document No.10. Given my findings above, I am satisfied that the conduct is so serious that this operator should be removed from the industry. The seriousness of my findings outweighs the impact of regulatory action. This operator lacks the mandatory and continuing requirement of good repute (as well as financial standing and professional competence) – section 27(1)(a).

I must then go on to consider whether this operator, and its director Mr Singh, should be disqualified from holding an operator’s licence in future. There must be deterrent impact in this case, given the breadth of instances of falsification and complete lack of systems to identify these, coupled with overloading, the number of infringements found after DVSA intervention and deliberate misleading of a DVSA Examiner in the course of his duties.

In my determination any operator that is dishonest should not be entitled to return until significantly and sufficiently rehabilitated. The operator licence system relies on trust, once that trust is broken it takes great efforts to repair. I have no hesitation in finding that this operator and Sukhraj Singh should be disqualified from holding an operator licence for a period of 5 years.

I revoke this licence with effect from 00:01 hours on 1st March 2024.

9.1 Vocational entitlement

I dealt with the driver conduct hearing in respect of Mr Felix at Public Inquiry. His vocational entitlement was revoked, and he was disqualified for a period of 18 months.

Laura Thomas

Deputy Traffic Commissioner

19th February 2024