Prohibitions issued by the police or DVSA during roadworthiness checks have fallen by 19% since 2013, according to figures obtained by Logistics UK.
However, the business group also warned against drawing the wrong conclusions and that more work was required to understand why there was a significant drop in notices handed out to operators between 2013/2014 and 2018/2019.
Logistics UK’s compliance report relies on publicly available DVSA data, as well as figures gathered from Freedom of Information requests.
It said the report identified several areas where compliance appeared to be improving, but James Firth, head of road freight regulation policy, added: “Measuring compliance, including the way in which DVSA targets enforcement – as well as changes to the law – is not always as simple as numbers going up or down.
“Industry and the authorities need to do more to understand what lies beneath the figures, and we need to make sure that interventions are focussed on getting dangerous vehicles off the road.”
• The reduction in prohibitions issued may be even greater than the figures obtained by Logistics UK. Annual DVSA statistics showed that during 2013/14 there were a total of 16,636 prohibitions handed out to HGVs for mechanical, drivers’ hours and weight offences. This had fallen to 7,767 in 2018/19 – a drop of 53.3%.
