A few underestimate the importance of these commitments and find themselves appearing before their traffic commissioner.

Take this recent case involving a bed manufacturer. The company was called to a public inquiry because it didn’t provide an audit to the Traffic Commissioner.

The audit was agreed as part of a previous public inquiry, which looked into the operator’s application for the licence.

So to get the licence, they’d made an extra promise to have an independent check of their maintenance and drivers’ hours compliance.

But they didn’t keep their word.

That wasn’t the only issue. The Traffic Commissioner, Tim Blackmore, also found:

• vehicles had picked up prohibitions and fixed penalties
• routine safety inspections had been stretched
• there was no effective driver defect reporting system in place
• there wasn’t any evidence of regular roller brake testing

The North East regulator told the company he was suspending its licence until they provided evidence of completed safety inspections with roller brake testing.

He also reduced the firm’s fleet from three to two vehicles saying the business needed a period of time to “fully reset” the maintenance systems.