News

A Nottinghamshire company escaped with a warning after appearing at its second public inquiry in just over two years. Worksop-based Nowra Enterprises, trading as Refrigerated Transits, holds a licence for four vehicles. When it appeared before North Eastern Traffic Commissioner Tom Macartney, vehicle examiner Ross Mellor said that since a previous public inquiry in September 2005 the company's vehicles had attracted one S-marked prohibition, two delayed prohibitions, two variations and a refusal  to clear.

He had examined two vehicles during a maintenance investigation in May and found they were satisfactory. However, a number of inspection records had not been fully completed and safety inspection intervals had been extended beyond the stated six weeks to 10 weeks. A vehicle with an insecure exhaust had been allowed back into service with the defect still present. Inspections were carried out by Bassetlaw District Council and repairs were handled in-house by a mobile mechanic in the open yard. The first-time pass rate at annual test was 25%.

Director Mark Arnold said many of the concerns raised could have been addressed by the previous transport manager - a new full-time transport manager had been appointed at considerable expense. However, the TC expressed concern that it had taken six weeks to notify him of the change of transport manager.  Arnold said he did not believe the safety inspections had extended beyond six weeks as vehicles had been off the road  and there should be a record of that somewhere in the office. Taking no action beyond issuing a warning, the TC said that after the first public inquiry the company had employed a transport consultant to put them on the right lines. Clearly things had gone wrong since, and that was disappointing.

Inadvertent lapse

The TC was satisfied that the company wanted to get its transport operation right and that it had fallen foul of the system inadvertently.