Cardiff-based City Transport (UK) has seen its licence halved to five vehicles due to maintenance, drivers' hours and tachograph problems. A Cardiff disciplinary inquiry was told that discrepancies in the maintenance records confirmed a number of inspections were carried out in-house. Some defects were reported but not addressed.
In addition, substantial discrepancies in kilometres recorded were revealed when matching maintenance records with tachograph records, causing suspicion that
there had been deliberate falsification of records. The relatively few defects recorded on some indicated inadequate maintenance facilities were available.
Transport manager David Emmett said he had often taken details of tachograph readings and suggested they were incorrectly transcribed onto maintenance records. He suggested that mistakes occurred due to the readings being taken from inside a dark, unlit cab. Welsh traffic commissioner Nick Jones said he was satisfied that maintenance records were not deliberately falsified, but there was evidence of incompetence and inept management skills, particularly from Emmett.
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