Decision

Written decision for Skip 4 U Ltd (OD2002375)

Published 30 October 2020

Decision of the Traffic Commissioner.

Director: Sukhchain Singh

Licence for four vehicles granted in April 2017.

Written version of oral decision given at the public inquiry in Birmingham on 7 October 2020

1. Decision

Restricted goods vehicle operator licence OD2002375 held by Skip 4 U Ltd is revoked with effect from 0001 hours on 4 November 2020 pursuant to Section 26(1)(c)(iii), (e) and (f) of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995.

Skip 4 U Ltd and its director Sukhchain Singh are disqualified from holding or obtaining any type of operator’s licence in any traffic area and (in Sukhchain Singh’s case) from being the director of any company holding or obtaining such a licence, pursuant to Section 28 (1), (4) and (5) of the 1995 Act. The disqualification is for a period of two years, from 4 November 2020 until 4 November 2022.

2. Reasons for the decision

2.1 Negative findings

The company has a very high MOT outright failure rate (one pass, two outright failures and one abandonment out of four presentations). The company has therefore failed to fulfil its undertaking to keep vehicles fit and serviceable.

The company did not operate a written driver defect reporting system until February 2020, when a DVSA vehicle examiner made an announced visit. The company tried to cover this up by claiming at the public inquiry that its transport consultants had taken away all the driver defect books relating to the period before February 2020. I do not find this claim credible.

There have been significant gaps between safety inspections. Inspections are supposed to be every six weeks, but gaps of around eight weeks have been common (even before COVID) and one vehicle was not given a safety inspection between 3 July 2019 and 8 January 2020.

The operator has failed to observe the rules relating to drivers’ hours and tachographs. The director himself has been committing numerous centrefield errors. Missing mileage reports are not up to date. Tachograph charts have not been collected on time. Driver cards have not been downloaded at the correct intervals. No action has been taken by the operator as the result of the tachograph analysis provided by its consultant. The company director has no understanding of the drivers’ hours rules.

The operator has failed to specify vehicles on its licence within the one month grace period. One vehicle was not specified until more than eight months after it was acquired. Another vehicle was specified 11 weeks after it was acquired. A third was wrongly specified on the licence (two digits were transposed) for 12 months before the error was corrected.

A vehicle incurred a prohibition for a broken landing leg secondary locking device.

The operator has had many opportunities to make improvements but has ignored them. An audit carried out by their consultants in June 2019 found numerous and serious instances of non-compliance. The DVSA vehicle examiner found very similar issues in February 2020 and a further audit in July 2020 by the consultants reported that no improvements had been made. The director, Sukhchain Singh, has sought to throw all responsibility for the lack of action on the consultants. He has taken no responsibility for, or apparent interest in, complying with the requirements.

The operator has failed to check driver entitlement with any degree of regularity. The inquiry heard that one driver’s entitlement has been checked once.

2.2 Positive issues

Sukhchain Singh attended an operator licence management course in December 2019 (although this is tinged with the negative that he seems to have retained nothing from it). His son Robin has also attended such a course, but only very recently and this does not seem to have yet led to any visible improvement in the management of the business.

The company has worked with transport consultants since at least June 2019. However, it has fallen out with the first firm of consultants it appointed, and the second has been appointed only in the last two weeks or so and has not had the time to set things right, beyond specifying the correct vehicles on the licence.

The negative issues listed in paragraphs 3-10 above far outweigh the positive.

2.3 Priority Freight and Bryan Haulage questions

I asked myself how likely it is that the operator will comply in the future. The answer, given actual experience of how Sukhchain Singh has reacted to the repeated voices pointing out that he needed to make substantial improvements quickly, is extremely unlikely.

I then asked myself whether the company deserved to go out of business. Because of the wide-ranging non-compliance found at the inquiry, its lasting duration, and the complete failure of the director to take any personal responsibility, is that it does.

2.4 Revocation of the licence

I am therefore revoking the licence under the Sections of the 1995 Act listed in paragraph 1, with effect from 4 November, giving the operator 28 days in which to wind down its business. Any of its vehicles found operating after that date will be liable to be impounded by DVSA.

2.5 Disqualification

Because of the wide-ranging nature of the issues and the company’s utter failure to address them effectively, I am disqualifying both the company and its director Sukhchain Singh under Section 28 of the 1995 Act from holding or obtaining an operator’s licence in future. In deciding upon the length of the disqualification, I have taken account of paragraph 100 of the STC’s Statutory Guidance Document 10. This posits a starting point of between one and three years for a first public inquiry. This is the operator’s first inquiry, but the scale of the non-compliance is such as to warrant a disqualification in the mid-point of this range: ie two years.

Nicholas Denton

Traffic Commissioner

7 October 2020