Deputy Traffic Commissioner Giles Pengelly has revoked the operator’s licence held by Birmingham-based Mr Scaffolding after concluding that directors Martin Ray and David Price could no longer be trusted to run a compliant operation. The revocation took effect at 11.45pm on 14 July 2026, following a public inquiry in Birmingham on 26 May.
The decision followed a DVSA maintenance investigation prompted by a prohibition issued on 10 November 2025. A company driver had been stopped near Stafford with an insecure load and received a fixed penalty notice.
The inquiry found that the company later sent the DVSA correspondence containing deliberate falsehoods about its safety procedures. It claimed that driver defect report (DDR) books were already in use and that vehicle defects had been recorded before preventative maintenance inspections (PMIs).
In fact, DDR books had not been used before the November 2025 incident. Defect records were created retrospectively and backdated to suggest that an effective safety system had been operating. Pengelly described this as a determined attempt to mislead the regulator and noted that both directors had read the letters before they were sent.
The company failed to resolve recurring problems with insecure loads despite earlier enforcement action and driver training. Pengelly found that the training had been neither emphatic nor frequent enough, while the directors had not adequately supervised drivers to ensure loads were secured correctly. The lack of effective action between March 2024 and November 2025 created an ongoing road safety risk.
The inquiry also identified serious weaknesses in the company’s maintenance arrangements:
- Brake tests were not consistently carried out during PMIs, including loaded brake tests that the operator had expressly promised the DVSA it would complete.
- PMIs were of poor quality, imperilling road safety and disadvantaging compliant competitors.
- Wheel-security and tyre-safety checks were inadequately documented.
- Drivers were not properly integrated into the safety system and continued to carry out walkaround checks inadequately.
Although the company blamed its maintenance providers, Pengelly stressed that responsibility for vehicle safety remained with the operator, regardless of who performed the work.
Pengelly said the company’s recent improvement was largely attributable to its new consultants rather than to action taken by the directors. He placed the case at the upper end of the “serious” category, citing the risks to road safety, attempts to conceal failings and the effect on fair competition. The deception was particularly serious because it was intended to prevent further scrutiny of matters directly affecting road safety.
The licence was revoked under sections 26(1)(h), 26(1)(f) and 26(1)(c)(iii) of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995, covering fitness to hold a licence, breaches of undertakings and prohibitions.
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