A mate of mine runs an eight-vehicle curtainsider fleet out of Nuneaton. Solid operation, been going 12 years. Last year he got called to a public inquiry before the Traffic Commissioner for the West Midlands. Two roadside prohibitions in six weeks — one PG9 on a trailer with a cracked air line, one on a driver for a daily rest infringement. Not catastrophic individually. Together, in a short window, they triggered an automated OCRS flag that put his operation into amber and generated a call-in letter.
He kept his licence. But he spent three months preparing for that hearing, took legal advice he hadn't budgeted for, and came out with undertakings attached to his O-licence that he still has to comply with and report on quarterly. All from two prohibitions in the same six-week period.
That's how it works. Not a dramatic sequence of events. Two ordinary problems in a bad run of luck, hitting the wrong threshold at the wrong time.
What triggers a public inquiry
Traffic Commissioners don't generally call operators into a PI on a whim. The triggers are fairly predictable once you understand the system.
The most common route in is OCRS deterioration — Operator Compliance Risk Score dropping into amber or red. I covered OCRS in detail in the OCRS post, but the short version: every roadside encounter is scored, prohibitions count heavily, serious infringements on driver cards count, and the scores roll up over a 36-month window. A fleet that accumulates enough negative scoring gets flagged to the TC's office for consideration.
Other triggers: DVSA intelligence about persistent non-compliance, referrals from another enforcement body, an operator who applies for an O-licence variation while their current compliance history looks shaky, a complaint from another road user or authority. And occasionally: an operator who fails to respond to a DVSA call-up letter for a targeted investigation, which tends to go very badly.
A public inquiry can also be triggered proactively — an operator who has had a serious near-miss, a vehicle involved in a fatal accident where hours or maintenance might be a factor, or a case referred following a police investigation. These tend to be more severe than the OCRS-flagged cases.
What happens before the inquiry room
The first contact is usually a letter from DVSA requesting attendance at an interview. Or in some cases, a direct call-in letter from the TC's office saying there will be a public inquiry on a named date. Both can arrive with very limited notice if the matter is considered urgent.
Before the hearing itself, DVSA will typically conduct a maintenance investigation — an examiner visits the fleet, checks maintenance records, PMI intervals, driver defect books, download records, tacho calibration documentation. They produce a report. That report goes before the TC. The operator gets a copy in advance of the hearing but often not far enough in advance to feel comfortable with it.
The DVSA report is critical. It's not just a summary of what prohibitions occurred. It covers whether maintenance systems were in place and followed, whether download cycles were being met, whether the transport manager was actively managing compliance. An operator who has good paperwork — even if outcomes have been bad — is in a significantly better position than one who's been running things informally.
What the TC is actually weighing up
Traffic Commissioners have a range of powers. They can take no action, issue a warning, attach undertakings to the licence, curtail the licence (reduce the vehicle numbers), suspend the licence temporarily, revoke the licence, or disqualify the operator from holding a licence for a period. In serious cases, the transport manager's certificate of professional competence can be impaired or revoked.
The TC is weighing up two things in particular. First: is the operator of good repute? Can they be trusted to comply? Is the non-compliance a one-off in a generally well-run operation, or does it reflect a structural problem — inadequate systems, management that doesn't prioritise compliance, financial pressure leading to corner-cutting?
Second: is the operator financially stable? An operator who can't maintain vehicles because of cash flow issues is a risk on the road. The TC doesn't want to issue an O-licence to a business that is going to collapse and leave unroadworthy vehicles on the network. Financial standing is assessed as part of the initial licence application and revisited at a PI if relevant.
The TC also looks at the transport manager specifically. Is the CPC holder actually running compliance, or are they a name on a form while someone else — or nobody — does the actual work? A nominal TM who has never met the drivers, never reviewed download reports, never followed up on defects is a liability at a PI, not an asset.
What operators get wrong in their preparation
I've talked to a few operators who've been through a PI, and the preparation mistakes fall into predictable patterns.
First: not engaging legal representation early enough. Some operators try to handle a PI themselves, reasoning that they know their own business and the TC will see their good intentions. The TC sees a lot of operators who have good intentions. They're looking at the systems and the evidence, not the intentions. Transport law specialists know how to present evidence in the format the TC expects and how to address DVSA's report point by point.
Second: not having the paperwork sorted before the DVSA pre-inquiry investigation. If you know a call-in letter is coming — because you've had prohibitions, because DVSA has been asking questions, because your OCRS is amber — start auditing your maintenance records, your download logs, your defect book now. Don't wait for the examiner to arrive and then try to locate records.
Third: blaming the driver. The TC is not interested in a narrative where the operator's systems were fine but a rogue driver caused all the problems. Operators are responsible for the compliance of their drivers. That's what the O-licence commits you to. An operator who turns up and says 'the driver was at fault' without demonstrating what systems were in place to prevent it — and what changed after — is not presenting a good case.
Undertakings — and why they matter after the hearing
If the outcome isn't suspension or revocation, it's often undertakings. The operator agrees, in writing, before the TC, to specific compliance actions. Regular download audits. Monthly maintenance review meetings. External compliance consultant visits. DVSA follow-up inspections at a defined interval. Quarterly reports to the TC's office.
These sound manageable. But they add up. A small operator running eight vehicles on thin margins doesn't have much slack in the admin burden. Undertakings create compliance obligations on top of the day-to-day. If you miss an undertaking — fail to submit a quarterly report, fail to carry out a scheduled audit — you're back before the TC, and this time the conversation starts from a worse position.
My mate in Nuneaton sends me his quarterly compliance summary every three months. Not for any reason, just a kind of therapy I think. It's meticulous. More meticulous than anything he was doing before the inquiry. That's the other thing the process does — it focuses the mind in a way that ordinary DVSA guidance never quite manages.
What drivers need to know about TCs
Most drivers don't think about the Traffic Commissioner until something goes wrong. But the TM's CPC is your operator's compliance backbone. If the TC revokes it, the fleet can't operate. Drivers lose work. And infringements on your driver card can feed directly into the PI evidence if DVSA is building a case around driver hours management.
Your infringement record isn't just between you and the roadside examiner. It goes into the operator's OCRS. It potentially goes into a DVSA investigation report. It can end up as exhibit evidence at a TC hearing. Three drivers on a small fleet each picking up minor infringements in the same quarter is a different conversation to one driver having one bad run. The cumulative picture is what the TC sees.
If you're a transport manager keeping compliance records manually — download logs, maintenance histories, driver debrief sheets — ShiftOwt brings that into one place where you can demonstrate the audit trail a PI would expect to see. £5.99/month for drivers, agency pricing on request for operators.