Ban for director of ‘extraordinarily negligent’ business15 May 2017
The director of Midland Poling Services has been banned for eight years and the business has had its operating licence revoked, after the traffic commissioner found it to be “extraordinarily negligent”.
Nick Denton, traffic commissioner for the West Midlands, said that Bentley took “little interest” in fleet safety and there was a “systematic failure by the company to treat maintenance with the seriousness it deserved”.
At a public inquiry recently, Denton heard from DVSA examiners after one of the company’s vehicles was involved in a serious collision last year which left a pedestrian with life-changing injuries.
The inquiry was told that there were many issues with Midland Poling’s maintenance procedures, including that regular vehicle safety inspections were not completed on time and defects identified on vehicles were not acted upon. The DVSA officer also issued a safety critical prohibition notice to one of the vehicles because of mechanical defects. A police vehicle examiner who examined the company’s vehicle after the collision in September 2016 told the traffic commissioner it was one of the worst he had seen in his 30-year career – 18 safety-related defects were found on the vehicle.
Denton found the company had been “extraordinarily negligent” in its failure to ensure that improvements were made.
He added: “This negligence was particularly evidenced by the fact that in November 2016, more than two months after the collision involving the seriously defective vehicle, the vehicle examiner issued an S-marked prohibition to another vehicle for some of the same issues which had been found on the vehicle involved in the collision (loose suspension bolts, leaking exhaust, ABS fault).”
Author
Laura Cork
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