It said: “While many operators take road safety very seriously, we need to protect you and other road users from those who don’t. To help us do this, we plan to share non-compliance data more widely on a wide range of road safety issues to encourage all operators to stay legal and safe on our roads.”
It added: “The data shows that some operators are persistent offenders, with EU operators receiving the majority of prohibitions. Some overseas operators have hundreds of offences against their operator licence. DVSA has developed targeting regimes that make it less commercially viable to continue to operate in this way and is working with officials in the worst offending countries to help address this.”
This data, available via www.is.gd/dohixe, only shows offences detected at the roadside by DVSA. It does not yet include the offences DVSA found during visits to operator sites or on desk-based assessments, which will increase the total number of GB operator offences.
DVSA said that, with limited access to non-GB sites or documentation on overseas vehicle compliance, DVSA targets 31% of roadside checks at British registered operators and 69% at overseas operators.
It also adds that operators, whether registered in Britain or oversees, will range in size. Larger operators, with more lorries could naturally be represented in the statistics more than smaller operators. The data does not include any offences picked up by the police. As the prohibitions shown in this data are ones that operators would have already been sent copies of through normal processes, any dispute of the prohibition should therefore have already been dealt with.
Analysis of the data by Transport Engineer suggests that the operator with the greatest number of drivers’ hours offences in 2020 was Tudefrigo of Spain, totalling 281 offences and incurring fines of £37,000. The UK-registered operator with the greatest number of offences was Christopher Hughes Transport Ltd of Northern Ireland; its total was 35 offences, and fines totalling £800. In total, there were 8,937 listings of operators with at least one infraction in the 2020 table, however some companies were listed multiple times.