HGV operator who made staff create false records has license revoked

The company was fined £380,000 in February, and now the Traffic Commissioner has revoked the licenses of the company and its directors.

Mansel Davies & Son Ltd is a family-owned international transportation company based in Wales, licensed to operate 160 vehicles and 130 trailers.

The DVSA started an investigation into the company in February 2018, when four of its drivers were found to have made false tachograph records. Other drivers’ hours’ offences were also discovered, including driving beyond the permitted maximum daily and fortnightly driving times, and failing to take the required amount of daily rest.

However, these cases weren’t considered by the DVSA as serious as what was uncovered later:

The DVSA’s investigation discovered that around 45 of the company’s preventative maintenance inspection (“PMI”) records appeared suspicious, in that they were unusually clean, lacked details of defects, vehicle condition etc and had not been signed by fitters as was the case with other records. The DVSA reported that an administrative assistant appeared to have been creating some PMI records to make it look as if the vehicles had been given their four-weekly or six-weekly (dependent upon vehicle type) PMIs when this was in fact not the case.”

The investigation found 19 instances where vehicles were actually carrying out transportations when they were supposedly receiving their PMIs. Also, 15 vehicles should have been „off road” or „laid up” while they were actually in commercial use – one for as much as 16,000km, during this time.

The DVSA also found that one of the directors ordered a junior member of staff to create these false maintenance records.

Finally, the company pleaded guilty to 19 charges of making a false instrument and was fined £380,000 by Swansea Crown Court in February 2020. Meanwhile, the the aforementioned junior staff member was sentenced to a suspended 9-month prison sentence.

Directors didn’t take responsibility

The directors of the company should have appeared in front of the Traffic Commissioner at the end of November. Instead, they resigned before the hearing. Presiding traffic commissioner Nick Denton named this behaviour as „the antithesis of good leadership”.

Denton concluded that the company’s maintenance malpractice had put “its employees and other road users in danger, as well as constituting grossly unfair competition against those hauliers who run compliant maintenance regimes”.

The traffic commissioner revoked the company’s operator licence with effect from 1st February 2021 and disqualified both the company and its directors – David Kaye Mansel Davies and Stephen Mansel Edward Davies, from holding an operator’s licence again. Rhodri Wyn and Stephen Mansel Edward Davies were also disqualified indefinitely from acting as transport managers.