cropper's column
Page 42
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Retaining inspection records for 15 months
• The "password" for licensing is "inspections". To know the magic formula may be the first step, but strict adherence to the rules is being increasingly enforced. One problem has arisen over the retention of the records of inspections for 15 months. An operator was censured by a vehicle examiner for not being able to produce his inspection sheets for 15 months. He had recently sold the vehicles and passed forward the records to the purchaser. One might think this fair enough. Not so, said the vehicle examiner. On legal grounds the examiner could well be correct.
It goes back to the application form, where one's signature is appended to this Declaration: "I declare . . . that the statements on intention made in answer to questions . . 26 will be fulfilled". Question 26 reads: 26. Irrespective of who carries out thi inspection and maintenance of your vehicles will you keep records of all defect inspection: of and repairs to authorised vehicles an preserve them for at least 15 months Answer YES or NO.
This is an undertaking the breach of whicl could result in the suspension or revocation o the licence.
Strict interpretation of the declaration, ly not passing forward the records when thi vehicle changes hands, appears to be some what in conflict with para 47 of the "Guide on records of inspections:—
One of the essentials of a satisfactor preventive maintenance inspection syster is that written records should be kept of ( when and by whom inspections are carrie out, (ii) the results of the inspectione (Hi) when and by whom any remedial work i done and details of such work. Such record need not be particularly elaborate. . . . A that is required is that those records shol enough detail to enable the inspectio history of each vehicle to be followed.
Thus the Guide looks at the vehicle's histon This purpose is better achieved by passing c the records whenever a vehicle transfers to new owner. In most situations this must be better arrangement for the vehicle examine who will have available the full mechanici history of the vehicle.
But part of the purpose of the records to verify the quality of the operator. Is he th kind of person who takes care and kee records? The problem probably only arise in acute form in a case such as I was involve in where every vehicle in a small fleet we
sold off as one transaction at one moment. E this operator had no continuity of records froi
any other vehicles. As luck would have it, ti' vehicle examiner arrived only a week or e after the fleet had been sold.
Ralph Croppe