Company to have transport license revoked following attempted fatality cover-up.
Following a public inquiry last month, the Traffic Commissioner for the North West of England, Simon Evans, has made an order to revoke the transport licence held by SR & RJ Brown, with effect from 31 January 2018. This means the company will not be able to run commercial vehicles after that date.
In his written decision, a copy of which is attached to this email, Mr Evans concluded:
“I find it difficult to envisage a much more serious set of circumstances than those that surround the role of this company in the death of Benjamin Edge. That is, two of its directors (the Brown brothers) committing the company far beyond its capability, acting in a reckless fashion, not keeping fellow directors informed and then seeking to cover up in a most despicable fashion what they had done when things went wrong.
“The operator is expected to put in place safe systems of work whether related to transport or not, to be operated in conjunction with its transport manager, to ensure the safety of staff deployed in the business. I am not satisfied taking into account the history of this operator, that I can be assured that the sort of system and process failures that led to the death of Benjamin Edge will not be repeated in the future in the context of transport, particularly with the Brown brothers playing such a prominent role in it.”
Three company bosses were jailed in March this year following the death of father of one, Benjamin Edge, who fell from a roof he was working on, without safety equipment and in windy conditions.
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