Reasons NOT to hire a solicitor or consultant for your public inquiry or a DVSA assessment or a preliminary hearing

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Reasons NOT to hire a solicitor or consultant for your public inquiry or a DVSA assessment or a preliminary hearing

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In the vast majority of cases, if you can read, put papers into folders, and use email, you don't need to hire a solicitor or consultant for your public inquiry or a DVSA assessment and there are even less reasons to hire someone for a preliminary hearing which is basically a very quick and easy mini public inquiry. For most operators and transport managers, the basic process of preparing for a public inquiry comes down to putting the records you already have in one stack and if you don't have some records, there's nothing you can do about it. A solicitor or consultant aren't going to create the missing records for you.

If your public inquiry is for a new application, that's the easiest type of a public inquiry and there are even less reasons to hire a solicitor. Contrary to what may seem from the letters you will receive, you are not required to have any special knowledge for an operator's licence or pass some additional tests. And if your transport manager has a TM CPC and his "good repute" hasn't been officially lost (this can only happen as result of a previous public inquiry), he is sufficiently qualified. You are not required to pass some test or even correctly answer some questions at the public inquiry. There's no such legal requirement. They may ask you some questions, and by all means do the best you can to answer them correctly, but even if you answer them incorrectly, that's not a reason to refuse a licence. This applies to both the directors and transport managers. The documents that you will be required to provide are the same ones that are required for a new application and the same ones that you already must've submitted for your application. In rare and special cases, they may ask for some additional documents.

The reasons NOT to hire solicitors or consultants are as follows
  • Everything you need to do and the documents you need to provide will be listed in the letters that you will receive from the Traffic Commissioner or the DVSA (they call it a "brief" to the public inquiry). A solicitor will not tell you much more than what's in those letters plus this guide to public inquiries. Essentially, you will be paying them several thousand pounds to read those letters for you. If you read that material yourself slowly and thoroughly it will take about 30 minutes to 1 hour. Do you really want to pay several thousand pounds for that? You will pretty much have to do everything else yourself anyway, even if you hire a solicitor. They will also pretend to do other things to keep up appearances. The easiest way for them to pretend to be busy is to arrange meetings with you. Meetings will waste a lot of your time and that is where they will tell you what the letters say as if it can't be said on the phone. They may also read some documents out loud while you are sitting next to them, like a parent reads to a child.

  • You will still have to provide all the documents that you are required to provide. A solicitor won't do it for you but he will take those documents from you and put them into folders so that it looks like he is doing something.

  • If you don't have some records that you are required to provide, a solicitor will not create them for you. And solicitors don't have any tricks to get you off. For example, don't hope that if you don't have PMI maintenance records, he is going to come out and say "you majesty, the law number 5 passed in year 1625 allows operators to operate without keeping maintenance records" and the Traffic Commissioner will be like "great legal argument, I didn't know about that law". I know you'd hope that but it's not going to happen.

  • In most public inquiries, solicitors aren't even allowed to speak on your behalf. The Traffic Commissioner will mostly want to talk directly to you – the director or the transport manager and there are no trick questions or anything to catch you out. It's not like a real criminal or civil court where the solicitor does most of the talking. In some cases, The Traffic Commissioner may be generous enough to allow him to say a couple of useless words so that he doesn't look like a complete fool in front of you after charging you several thousand pounds and so that you don't feel completely cheated. In that case, you will go home and think "at least he said a couple of words, good solicitor". Public inquiries are essentially a kangaroo court where the judge, prosecutor, jury and executioner are all combined into one person so your best hope is to give them the most records you can and then apologise and ask for leniency about the rest. You don't need a solicitor for that.

  • Don't expect a solicitor to actually "defend" you at the public inquiry even if he could (but as I said above, they almost never can). If you pay close attention to how they act, you will notice how subserviently they conduct themselves at public inquiries and that they are completely afraid and reluctant to actually defend you in any way most likely because their good and friendly relationship with the Traffic Commissioner is far more important to them than you as just one client. They know that they will have to appear at other public inquiries and they need to keep up the appearance of a good relationship with the "judge" and not object to anything the Traffic Commissioner says for fear of aggravating him. So don't expect them to stand up for you like you may have seen on TV or in films. A solicitor in real life will only give you a lacklustre theatre performance.

  • I have openly invited many solicitors to post a rebuttal to this post and disprove my arguments in it. None of them have done it so far which is a tacit acknowledgement of their uselessness when it comes to public inquiries. They have nothing to say against my arguments in this post. If you still want to hire a solicitor, when you find one, send him the link to this post and ask him to post a rebuttal to it before you hire him. Here's how to register and post: https://transportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=6836

If you still want to hire a solicitor or consultant for your public inquiry or a DVSA assessment, see this post for recommendations or post your own free ad in this Facebook group for transport managers with 20,000 members or give me a call on 07833 684449 (phone or WhatsApp) and I'll refer a good one to you.

My advice to you about how to deal with a public inquiry or a DVSA assessment or a preliminary hearing
  1. Read every word in their letters and do what they say the best you can (and obviously don't do what you can't).
  2. Take an Operator Licensee Awareness Training (OLAT) course online, here's a website where you can book it and mention at the public inquiry that you've taken it.
  3. Attend the public inquiry even if you don't have what they requested in their letters. Not attending is the worst thing you can do and it will cause the worst outcome for you. Attend even if you don't have anything at all and have nothing to say in your defence (just apologise in that case), you will still be better off than not attending.
  4. Don't hire a solicitor or consultant.

Below is a video where the traffic commissioner Richard Turfitt explains how to prepare for a public inquiry. Notice carefully where the female solicitor talks about the issues that the company faced that led to the public inquiry but she has nothing to say about what she could actually do as a solicitor about those issues to help the company. There's nothing she can do for the reasons I explained above. She only blames the company for being sloppy, that's all she does basically. If you still want to hire a solicitor, show them this video and ask "what exactly would you do to help this company"? Demand a specific and detailed answer and don't accept vague lawyery nonsense. Also it's shocking to see how even the traffic commissioner encourages you to hire a solicitor knowing full well that there's nothing they can do other than organise your existing records into folders.



Below is a 24-minute video where a solicitor talks about public inquiries but does not give a single specific example about what a solicitor can actually do to help you with a public inquiry.
One useful quote from the video though: It is also important for operators to understand that actions speak louder than words. The attitude of an operator when something goes wrong can be very instructive. Some recognise the problem at once and take immediate and effective steps to put matters right. Others only recognise the problem when it is set out in a call-up letter and begin to put matters right in the period before the public inquiry takes place. A third group leave it even later and come to the public inquiry with promises of action in the future. A fourth group bury their heads in the sand and wait to be told what to do during the public inquiry.



Below is a screenshot of a typical request for documents to be provided for a public inquiry for a new operator's licence application. All of those items require just common sense, very simple answers that any rational person should be able to provide without any special knowledge, especially if you've already applied for an operator's licence. Disregard the complicated vernacular they use. They like to unnecessarily complicate their wording in order to scare you and to appear smarter than they actually are. Below is a translation of what they want in that screenshot to plain English. It's basically the same things that you needed to apply for an operator's licence in the first place, see this guide.

a) your company must be based in the UK
b) no recent criminal convictions or serious issues with a previous operator's licence
c) you have the required amount of money on your bank account
d) you have a qualified transport manager who has a certificate of professional competence
e) transport managers can only be listed on up to 4 licenses or up to 50 vehicles
f) you will use tachographs, driver tacho cards and tacho software when you start working after the licence is granted
g) drivers will ask the weight of the load when they are loaded to make sure they are not overloaded
h) you found a garage (see Section 6 in this guide) that will do your MOTs and preventative maintenance inspections and signed a contract with them
i) you found a suitable operating centre usually at a commercial yard, not residential
j) there's enough space at your operating centre for all your vehicles plus enough space around them for walk-around daily inspections by drivers
k) you have the required amount of money on your bank account (this is the same as 'c' above)

List of documents required for a public inquiry for a new operator licence application.jpeg
List of documents required for a public inquiry for a new operator licence application.jpeg (602.33 KiB) Viewed 796 times

If you need a Transport Manager (CPC Holder) or assistance with an Operator's Licence anywhere in the UK, contact Dmitry Nade at TransportForum.com 7 days a week 8am-11pm on 07833 684449 (phone and WhatsApp) or email: [email protected]

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