Three-year ban for haulier after ‘long-lasting deception’14 November 2017

The director of a haulage firm has been banned for three years after deceiving DVSA inspectors about the existence of a transport manager.

At a public inquiry in Birmingham on 25 October, West Midlands traffic commissioner Nick Denton heard that Rodney Horne, director of RKH Logistics, had not employed a transport manager from December 2009, when the operator’s licence was granted, to July 2017.

Denton said the serious and sustained nature of the deception also meant that RKH Logistics was no longer of good repute.

In May this year, Horne told a DVSA examiner that his transport manager was unavailable due to illness. The examiner subsequently received a call from someone purporting to be the transport manager, saying he had returned to work and was back in control.

However, the traffic commissioner concluded it was Horne who was behind that call.

Later that month, Horne told the DVSA examiner that he had agreed the transport manager should step down with immediate effect – in fact, the nominated transport manager had never undertaken the role.

Revoking the company’s licence with effect from 22 November, the regulator said: “The operator’s behaviour ... has undermined the entire regulatory system and has constituted unfair competition against those standard licence holders which play by the rules and employ professionally competent transport managers.”

Horne’s disqualification takes effect on the same date.

Author
Laura Cork

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