Avoiding a public inquiry. Keep records that answer for you.

A public inquiry is a formal hearing in front of a Traffic Commissioner, and for a PSV operator called in for regulatory reasons the question on the table is whether the licence should carry on as it is. Few get there from a single bad day. They get there from a run of things a DVSA examiner wrote down, and paperwork that could not explain them. Kept properly, the same paperwork is the best defence an operator has.

What a public inquiry actually is

The Traffic Commissioners publish a guide to their hearings. In short: the commissioner is the decision maker, DVSA usually gives the evidence in a regulatory case, and the standard of proof is the civil one, meaning more likely than not. For an existing PSV licence the call-up letter has to give at least 14 days’ notice. It sets out why the inquiry is being held, the evidence the commissioner will look at, and often a list of documents to send in beforehand.

The powers come from section 17 of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981. A commissioner can revoke or suspend a PSV licence, or attach conditions to it, on several grounds. The ones that matter most for maintenance are an undertaking on the licence not being kept, a prohibition being issued against one of your vehicles, and a material change in your circumstances. A standard licence must be revoked if the holder no longer meets the core requirements, such as good repute, financial standing and professional competence, or the transport manager no longer qualifies. If the commissioner is thinking of acting against your licence and you ask for an inquiry, one has to be held before any action is taken.

Behind all of that sits a promise you made when the licence was granted. Section 14ZC of the same Act requires the commissioner to be satisfied that you have adequate facilities or arrangements to keep your vehicles fit and serviceable. A public inquiry about maintenance is, at heart, the commissioner checking whether that is still true.

How operators end up being called in

Prohibitions, and S marks in particular

A PG9 prohibition is a ground for action on its own. What turns a prohibition from a nuisance into a problem is the endorsement. Under DVSA’s maintenance investigation guidance, an examiner marks a defect S where it points to a significant failure of roadworthiness compliance: a long-standing fault that the last safety inspection should have found, something a walkaround should have picked up, a warning light the driver could not have missed, poor workmanship, or simply too many defects on one vehicle. X is for genuinely random failures such as a bulb. An S-marked category 1 prohibition, meaning an immediate one for brakes, steering or tyres, starts a most serious infringement investigation, and that investigation goes to the commissioner whatever its outcome. There is more on how prohibitions work in our guide to PG9 prohibitions.

OCRS

Your Operator Compliance Risk Score does not call you to an inquiry by itself. It decides how often DVSA looks at you. A higher score makes it more likely your vehicles are pulled in at the roadside, and every extra stop is another chance of a prohibition. S-marked defects carry double the points of the same defect unmarked, and with only a few encounters on record, one or two S marks move the score a long way. Our OCRS guide walks through the points and bands.

Maintenance investigations

A maintenance investigation is a DVSA examiner working through your records, your facilities and a sample of your vehicles against a set question list. Each question is marked satisfactory, mostly satisfactory, unsatisfactory, or report to the Traffic Commissioners. An unsatisfactory result means you must explain what you will do about it, and DVSA may then close the case, check again later, or send the report to the commissioner. A report to the commissioners outcome goes to the commissioner with your explanation attached. You normally get 14 days from receiving the report to respond. Our guide to DVSA maintenance investigations covers the visit in detail.

MOT failures

Examiners treat annual test results as a report card. They compare your final fail rate with the national average. Safety-critical failures, multiple failure items and repeated passes after rectification point to poor maintenance standards. Running a vehicle without a valid annual test, deliberately, is a straight report to the commissioner.

Everything else

The Senior Traffic Commissioner’s statutory document on the principles of decision making tells staff to expect the commissioner to consider formal action where people need protecting from serious injury, where an operator ignores a warning and keeps going, or where the first report is serious enough on its own. If you have had one or more warning letters in the past five years, the commissioner is expected to consider regulatory action. New operators are more likely to be called in during their first year if the systems they promised are not working. Finance, transport manager and drivers hours problems can start a case too, and any operator called in must show it still has the required financial standing.

The step before an inquiry

Not every case goes to a full hearing. The first time an operator picks up a small number of prohibitions or shows minor failings in the maintenance system, the commissioner’s office can write asking for an explanation and assurances. A good reply can lead to an alternative disposal. Other options include a warning letter, a meeting with a senior team leader at the Office of the Traffic Commissioner, or a preliminary hearing to decide whether a full inquiry is needed. The decision is always the commissioner’s.

Treat that letter as evidence, because it is. Say what went wrong, why, what you changed and when. Send proof, not intentions: the new forward planner, the brake test printouts, the training records.

What the Traffic Commissioner weighs up

The commissioner is not sentencing you. The job is to keep operators who can and will comply, and to remove those who cannot or will not. That means a balancing exercise: how serious the failings were, what you have done about them and how quickly, the size of your fleet and your history. Findings are made as things stand on the day of the inquiry, so genuine improvements count. Promises made in the room carry less weight, because you were trusted to comply from the day the licence was granted.

The guidance builds the decision around three questions taken from appeal decisions: can this operator be trusted to comply in future, how likely is it that they will, and in the most serious cases, ought they to be put out of business. It also lists features that push a case one way or the other. These are the ones that touch maintenance.

Two points from the case law are worth pinning up in the transport office. Setting up a system is not enough: the undertaking means checking that it works. And an operator is expected to react to warning signs such as repeated test failures or prohibitions.

Possible outcomes

The same statutory document gives starting points, while making clear the commissioner can move up or down from them and that they do not predict any case. This is how conduct maps to them.

• Severe: revocation, with detailed consideration of disqualification, a long suspension, or a significant indefinite curtailment.
• Serious: revocation with disqualification considered, suspension for up to 28 days, or a significant time limited curtailment.
• Moderate: suspension for up to 14 days, or a curtailment that does not materially affect the operation.
• Low: a formal warning that a further inquiry is likely to lead to action against the licence.

For a PSV licence, curtailment can mean a condition cutting the number of vehicles you may run. The commissioner can also record new undertakings, such as roller brake testing four times a year or an independent audit. The Traffic Commissioners publish guidance on what a compliance audit should cover, and the auditor must be free of any conflict. The transport manager’s repute can be considered at the same hearing. Decisions are often given on the day, and can be appealed to the Upper Tribunal.

What good evidence of compliance looks like

The call-up letter usually asks for maintenance records in advance, and documents that arrive late may not be taken into account. The commissioner wants to see a system working over time, not a file tidied the week before. In practice that means:

• Complete safety inspection records for every vehicle for at least the last 15 months, each signed off as roadworthy, with brake test printouts and any re-torque records attached.
• A forward planner showing inspections, MOTs and calibrations at least six months ahead, and inspections done on time against it.
• VOR records with dates and reasons, and an inspection before any vehicle that missed one went back out.
• Driver defect reports with the assessment, the repair and the date it was done, plus nil defect reports showing checks happen every day.
• For every prohibition: what the defect was, why it was missed, and what changed afterwards, with proof.
• MOT history, with the reason for each failure and what was done about it.
• Maintenance contracts that match what the licence records, and evidence you check the contractor’s work.
• The transport manager’s CPD, and evidence they review the inspection sheets.

Our page on maintenance records goes through each of these. PSVault was built to produce exactly this kind of evidence: its maintenance investigation self-check runs DVSA’s own question set against your records each day and tracks the actions you take, and each prohibition gets its own investigation file pulling together the notice, the repair and the last inspection.

A practical checklist

• Read every prohibition notice for the endorsement. Investigate each S mark within days, write it up and keep it.
• Check your OCRS at least monthly and know which encounters are driving it.
• Run the maintenance investigation questions on yourself every quarter and act on what you find.
• Compare defects found at inspection with what drivers reported. Retrain where drivers are missing things.
• Keep inspections within the interval on your licence. If one slips, record why and put it right.
• Look at MOT results as they come in, not once a year.
• Answer any letter from DVSA or the commissioner’s office on time, with evidence attached.
• If you are called in, get specialist advice early and send the documents asked for by the date given.