Trust and honesty are at the foundation of the operator licensing regime.

A recent public inquiry saw that trust break down beyond repair.

A transport manager learned the hard way recently that responsibilities of that role should never be abused.

Both the company holding the licence and the transport manager admitted the declaration they'd made - that a contract between them was in place - was indeed a false one.

The licence had been running without a transport manager for 15 months.

Although both parties held their hands up to what they'd done, Traffic Commissioner for the North West of England, Simon Evans, found the events went against the protection of fair competition in the industry. He said the arrangement had been a charade from the beginning.

After the TM admitted “he knew deep down what he was doing was wrong”, Mr Evans concluded regulatory action was an unavoidable consequence of those actions.

The operator’s licence was also revoked.

You can read the latest traffic commissioner decisions for your area here.