Three directors disqualified after firm “put business before safety”

Published Safety & Health Practitioner, May 2009

A haulage company that was recently fined for health and safety breaches in relation to the death of a member of the public has been put out of business. 

The traffic commissioner for Scotland, Joan Aitken, revoked the operating licence and disqualified two directors for seven years and a former director for two years. Sending a warning to other operators, she said: “Disqualified operators often seek to re-emerge in another corporate form. I warn other operators and persons to be very wary of providing a front for continued operation by the directors of this company”

The commissioner’s decision follows a successful prosecution of the company under sections 3(1) and 33(1) of the HSWA 1974. This related to an incident in July 2006, when a 30-tonne wheeled loader, which the company was considering buying, rolled off the trailer it was being transported on for tests, and crushed a car carrying two members of the public. One person was killed in the collision and the other person was injured.

A court concluded that inadequate plant, materials and information were available to the company’s driver, who had no information about the weight of the vehicle, and had an inadequate number of sufficient weight-bearing chains to secure the loader. He was also not informed about the poor quality of the brakes on the loader.

Further information to the Crown included a remark attributed to the company’s contracts manager, who said: “The chains broke once the lorry went up the hill and the machine came off. These old f**king chains are never checked.” The company director declined any responsibility for the wheel loader or agreement to purchase it, and it was returned to it’s owners.

The company was fined £3750 in April 2008. However, in January this year, an Appeal Court judge raised the penalty to £30,000, after ruling that the sentencing judge had incorrectly based the original fine principally on the company’s ability to pay, and not taken account of the gravity of the offence.

The company has now been put out of business, following a public inquiry and driver-conduct hearing held at Inverness in March.

Said Traffic Commissioner Aitken: “The operator clearly had no idea of modern competence in the manner of moving heavy equipment. It was the grossest error of judgement undertaking that journey with that equipment. For a goods-vehicle operator it was an act of astonishing recklessness.”

The company was also involved in a seperate incident in November last year, when a trailer came loose and seriously injured the driver of a private vehicle. Considering the omissions of the company’s driver, Aitken remarked: “I am in no doubt that this trailer coupling was defective and that the defect should have been spotted by the driver, and that there was also something amiss in the communication between the driver and the workshop, in respect of the operation of the plate within these couplings.

“I do not believe that the driver properly coupled that trailer combination that evening. I do not believe that coupling to have been properly maintained in the operator’s workshop.”

Aitken accepted that the company had organised some driver training, and had appointed a health and safety consultant to look after its road-haulage business. However, she concluded that the directors had “put business before safety”, adding that their “demeanour as respectable and responsible has the allure of the mirage”.

She reserved special condemnation for the firm’s transport manager, who she described as “so out of date” in relation to his responsibilities that: “I am not at all convinced that I could trust him with an operator licence or responsibility for a transport operation ever again.”

She disqualified both men for seven years, as well as a former director, for two years. The driver was deemed not fit, by reason of his conduct, to be entitled to hold a large-goods vehicle driver licence, and was subsequently disqualified for 12 months.

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