Coach Company Keeps Licence, Despite Regulatory Failings, After Traffic Commissioner’s Public Inquiry

This Operator, represented at Public Inquiry by barrister Harry Bowyer, were called into Public Inquiry as a result of a coach being used to carry football fans to a match without complying with the regulations. The same coach was discovered to have a tyre worn down to the canvas. The subsequent DVSA inspection revealed a further series of regulatory failures which the operator failed to address in a timely manner. The Operator appeared at Public Inquiry in June with another firm of solicitors who failed to serve the documents in a comprehensible form for the Public Inquiry and then demanded a second fee considerably larger than the first for the adjourned hearing that resulted from the inadequate service of documents.

The operator came to SBC. We applied for a transcript of the first hearing and prepared and submitted a properly indexed and paginated bundle. The Traffic Commissioner dealt with the case by way of a temporary curtailment for the operator to address those areas in which they were still sub par but allowing them to operate at their full authorisation once that period was over.