Driving Offences (Hansard, 28 January 1994)

§ Mr. Key

The traffic commissioners are responsible for deciding whether drivers are fit persons to hold an entitlement to drive large goods and passenger carrying vehicles.

It must remain the responsibility of the traffic commissioners to deal with each case which comes to their notice on its merits. I am, however, recommending to the traffic commissioners that, in cases where no aggravating circumstances apply, they should follow the guidelines set out:

(i) a first-time disqualification of 12 months or less should normally be dealt with by a warning letter, with no further disqualification of the driver's LGV or PCV entitlement;
(ii) a disqualification of longer than 12 months should result in the driver appearing before a traffic commissioner and a period of one to three months' further suspension of the LGV/PCV entitlement should be considered to give the driver an opportunity to regain his or her driving skills and road sense in an ordinary car before starting to drive LGVs or PCVs again;
(iii) where two or more disqualifications of more than eight weeks have been imposed within the last five years, and the combined total exceeds 12 months, the driver should normally be required to attend a hearing. A period of three to six months' further suspension of the LGV/PCV entitlement should normally be applied;
(iv) Traffic commissioners should continue to deal on a case by case basis with drivers convicted of relevant non-endorsable offences—for example, drivers' hours—endorsable offences such as bad accidents and others which come to their notice and—in the case of PCV drivers—relevant criminal convictions; and
(v) for new applicants for LGV/PCV entitlement, if the applicant has nine or more penalty points, traffic commissioners should consider either issuing a warning or asking the applicant to resubmit his/her application when the penalty points had been reduced.