Decision for RMK Haulage Ltd (OF2037001)
Source: gov.uk (2025-11-13)

Written decision of the Traffic Commissioner in the East of England for RMK Haulage Ltd and transport manager Raymond Rowland

EAST OF ENGLAND TRAFFIC AREA

DECISION OF THE DEPUTY TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER

PUBLIC INQUIRY HELD IN CAMBRIDGE ON 30 SEPTEMBER 2025

OPERATOR: RMK HAULAGE LTD LICENCE OF2037001

Decisions

The standard national goods vehicle operator’s licence OF2037001 held by RMK Haulage Ltd is revoked with effect from 0001 hours on 10 November 2025 pursuant to Section 26(1)(e) and (f)) and Section 27(1)(a) of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 (“the 1995 Act”).

RMK Haulage Ltd and director Anmol Chawla are disqualified from holding or obtaining any type of operator’s licence in any traffic area and (in Mr Chawla’s case) from being the director of any company holding or obtaining such a licence, pursuant to Section 28(1), (4) and (5) of the 1995 Act. The disqualification is for the period of 12 months, from 10 November 2025 to 10 November 2026.

Raymond Rowland has lost his good repute as a transport manager, pursuant to Schedule 3 paragraph 1 of the 1995 Act. Under paragraph 16(2) of that Schedule he is disqualified with immediate effect, for a period of 12 months until 4 November 2026, from acting as a transport manager on any operator’s licence.

Background

RMK Haulage Ltd holds a standard national goods vehicle operator’s licence (OF2037001) for four vehicles and four trailers. The licence was granted in November 2020. The sole director of the company is Anmol Chawla. The nominated transport manager on the licence from its grant until his resignation on 30 August 2025 was Raymond Rowland.

DVSA investigation

In February 2025 a DVSA traffic examiner carried out a desk-based assessment of the company’s compliance with rules relating to drivers’ hours, driver entitlement, operating centre etc. The report was marked “unsatisfactory” for the following reasons:

the operator was parking two vehicles at its Casp Holdings operating centre in Spalding: the operator was only authorised to keep one vehicle at that centre;

there was no evidence that driver entitlement had been checked;

there was no evidence that tachograph data was being analysed;

the operator wrongly believed that drivers could opt out of the Working Time Regulations;

one of the four vehicles in use, FN68 LGY, was not specified on the licence;

the operator was using “self-employed”, “limited company” drivers. This was not normally a legitimate employment arrangement in the road haulage industry.

In the light of this report, the traffic commissioner decided to propose to revoke the licence. The company was informed of this by letter dated 20 May 2025. By email of 3 June 2025 the company requested a public inquiry. Mr Chawla accepted that the company’s response to the desk-based questionnaire had been poor, and explained that the transport manager had suffered a personal bereavement and had had to devote time to sorting out family affairs.

Public inquiry

In the light of the company’s request and the DVSA report, both the company and transport manager were called to a public inquiry. Call-up letters and emails were sent on 8 August 2025.

On 30 August 2025 transport manager Raymond Rowland notified the traffic commissioner’s office of his resignation. The operator requested a period of grace in which to find a new transport manager: in the meantime, Mr Chawla explained, transport consultants Michael Davies and Marvin Rothman had been engaged. The traffic commissioner did not grant a period of grace, but extended until 30 September 2025 (the date of the inquiry) the deadline for providing evidence that a period of grace was merited.

The call-up letters requested the operator and TM to provide drivers’ hours and maintenance records, plus evidence of financial standing, in advance of the inquiry.

The ex-transport manager, Raymond Rowland, submitted a statement which included the following points:

after a good start, Mr Chawla had about 18 months ago begun to be lax with maintenance and the general running of the company;

Mr Chawla had insisted on using limited company drivers, despite Mr Rowland telling him that he couldn’t do this;

Mr Rowland had asked Mr Chawla on numerous occasions for the vehicles’ preventative maintenance inspection reports but Mr Chawla had always prevaricated;

the stated maintenance provider was not being used because Mr Chawla considered it “too expensive”;

Mr Raymond was not given access to the online R2C maintenance records until 13 August 2025;

there were numerous instances of missing mileage but the drivers’ response when tackled about this was that Mr Chawla had said that “it was ok”;

Mr Raymond had met Mr Chawla on 16 August 2025 and been handed ten PMI records for onward transmission to the traffic commissioner’s office. Four days later Mr Chawla had telephoned to ask him to remove them as otherwise the traffic commissioner might see that the vehicles had been in use on the days they had supposedly been in for maintenance;

only one driver had ever sent him any driver walk-round check records. Mr Chawla had told drivers to go through him rather than the TM;

Mr Raymond felt that he had exercised the transport manager function to the best of his ability given how hard Mr Chawla had made it for him to do the job.

Missing mileage records submitted by Mr Rowland alongside his statement showed that over the period 1 May 2024 to 21 August 2025 there were many thousands of missing kilometres, most of which had no explanation. There were many times when drivers had driven the vehicles using their tachograph cards but those tachograph cards had never been downloaded by the operator.

Mr Rowland also submitted evidence of WhatsApp exchanges between himself and Mr Chawla, showing a dysfunctional relationship between the two. On one occasion Mr Rowland had messaged Mr Chawla on 23 August 2025: “I’ve been asking for a face-to-face [meeting] for months you keep changing things we either meet in next 7 days or sort the [public inquiry] out yourself [sic]”.

On 10 September 2025 DVSA submitted a pre-inquiry report [based on the drivers’ hours data supplied to it]. This noted that the operator had failed to provide any driver infringement reports or vehicle unit reports. There was no evidence of any disciplinary action taken against drivers.

The traffic commissioner’s office also received representations dated 13 September 2025 from a transport consultant Andrew Bell [the services of Messrs Davies and Rothman appeared not to have been continued] who explained that he had been approached by Mr Chawla on 10 September 2025 and asked to assist with the inquiry. He had very soon realised that the operator was in serious trouble and that the loss of its licence was an almost certain outcome. Mr Bell believed that Mr Chawla had been naïve and incompetent rather than wilfully negligent. He had placed too much trust in his transport manager, while at the same time failing to understand what was required to be a compliant operator.

Finally, evidence of financial standing submitted by the operator in advance of the inquiry showed average funds, over the period 10 May to 8 August 2025, of £REDACTED, far short of the £21,500 necessary to support four vehicles.

The inquiry was held in Cambridge on 30 September 2025. Present were director Anmol Chawla, ex-transport manager Raymond Rowland and transport consultant Andrew Bell.

Evidence of Anmol Chawla

Mr Chawla sought to blame Mr Rowland for many of the operator’s shortcomings. Mr Rowland had told him that he didn’t need to keep the money for four vehicles in the company’s bank account. He had asked Mr Rowland to specify the vehicle FN68 LGY on the licence but he had failed to do so. Mr Rowland had always had access to the maintenance records. From October to December 2024 Mr Chawla had been in India: he had told Mr Rowland to keep an eye on things and sort out any issues. In advance of the inquiry he had taken three vehicles off the licence and the fourth was now up for sale. Drivers were now employed on a PAYE basis [although, when questioned, Mr Chawla accepted that this basically boiled down to himself].

Mr Chawla accepted that he had passed to Mr Rowland what were essentially fraudulent maintenance documents but stressed that these had not been submitted to the inquiry by the operator [although Mr Rowland passed me the documents just prior to the inquiry]. Mr Chawla handed over what he said were the genuine maintenance documents. This was very late in the day but I undertook to look at them before reaching my decision.

Evidence of Raymond Rowland

Mr Rowland said that at the beginning of the licence things had gone well. But as time had gone on, Mr Chawla had become evasive after the increase of the licence from two to four vehicles in early 2024. He had used to chase Mr Chawla to say that a vehicle was due for its safety inspection. Short of taking the vehicles’ keys away he could not force Mr Chawla to take action. Mr Raymond accepted that the failure to specify a vehicle on the licence was down to him. The large amount of missing mileage was mainly down to drivers disappearing without their cards being downloaded. He had managed to download one driver’s card regularly. Mr Raymond apologised for having let matters deteriorate to this level.

Evidence of Andrew Bell

Mr Bell referred to his 30 years in the industry and said that managing upwards was a strength of his. Mr Chawla needed a thorough education in the skills needed to manage a business. Mr Bell could deliver this.

Closing submissions

Mr Chawla said that he was willing to learn. He had booked an operator licence management course in November. He had not deliberately made mistakes, but lack of knowledge and lack of money had caused him to get into trouble.

Post inquiry

The maintenance records Mr Chawla handed to me at the end of the inquiry were a mixed bag. Vehicles WU69 AXA and PO18 HJZ appeared to have had regular safety inspections to the correct intervals. The records appeared genuine, unlike the ones Mr Chawla had given to Mr Rowland which were clearly fictitious. Records were sparser for vehicle YN18 JZA. There was a long gap in safety inspections between 4 December 2024 and 4 April 2025. The vehicle had travelled more than 30,000km between the inspections. The April 2025 inspection reported that one tyre was at 1mm tread depth and two others at 2mm. For vehicle FN68 LGY there were safety inspection reports dated 3 April 2025, 28 May 2025 and 21 July 2025. However, there were repair bills for the vehicle (addressed to RMK Haulage Ltd) dating back to 23 October 2024.

The inquiry clerk forwarded my conclusions set out in the above paragraph to the company, asking Mr Chawla for any comments. There has been no reply.

Findings

After considering the evidence, I make the following findings:
- the company lacks professional competence and has lacked it since the nominated transport manager Raymond Rowland left at the end of August 2025 (Section 27(1)(a) of the 1995 Act refers). The operator did request a period of grace but owing to the lack of knowledge of director Anmol Chawla and his proven inability to run a compliant operation, I am refusing this request.
the company lacks the required financial standing (Section 27(1)(a) refers). It has sufficient funds only for one vehicle rather than the four for which it is authorised and has been operating.

the company has parked two vehicles at one of its authorised operating centres when it is authorised only to park one vehicle at that centre (Section 26(1)(f) refers).

the company has failed to fulfil its promise, given on application, that vehicles would be given safety inspections every eight weeks. There are significant gaps exceeding this period in some of the safety inspection records presented to the inquiry.

the company has failed to fulfil its undertakings (Section 26(1)(f)) refers) –

to ensure that drivers report defects in writing. No driver defect reports were available.

to ensure that rules relating to drivers’ hours and tachographs are observed. Many driver cards have not been downloaded and consequently there has been no analysis of the data or identification of infringements. There is a significant amount of unaccounted for mileage.

the company has made extensive use of “self-employed” or “limited company” drivers. The use of such drivers, when their status is properly that of employee, is prejudicial to fair competition. The payment of national insurance contributions in respect of such drivers, and the requirement to offer, enrol them in and contribute to pensions schemes and to pay holiday entitlement has been avoided by the company. It is also much more difficult to exercise disciplinary authority over drivers who are not employees (see the Upper Tribunal’s decision T/2019/54 Bridgestep Ltd Tom Bridge).

former transport manager Raymond Rowland is not of good repute (Schedule 3 and Section 27(1)(b) of the 1995 Act refer). He was clearly failing to exercise the required continuous and effective management of the transport activities of the business. He failed to ensure that drivers did their daily walk-round checks and reported the results in writing. He failed to ensure that vehicles were given regular safety inspections; he did not even have access to the safety inspection reports. He failed to download many drivers’ tachograph cards or run infringement reports. He appears to have been a largely absentee transport manager, failing to meet Mr Chawla (who was one of the drivers) for many months. Only when the public inquiry was called did Mr Raymond seem to make some kind of concerted effort to get the records in order but by then it was far too late.
- the operator RMK Haulage Ltd and its director Anmol Chawla are not of good repute (Section 27(1)(a) of the 1995 Act refers). The operator has failed to fulfil multiple undertakings that it gave when applying for the licence. It has cut corners on maintenance; it has failed to ensure the observance of drivers’ hours rules; it has used drivers over whom it has little control. Good repute cannot be retained in these circumstances;
Balancing act

I weighed up the negative against the positive issues. On the negative side were the above findings. On the more positive side were the operator’s engagement of a transport consultant and willingness to attend a training course. There is also a 100% MOT pass rate (nine out of nine).

Conclusion

On balance, I conclude that the negative factors outweigh the positives. In any case, the company is without professional competence and financial standing. It also lacks the required good repute. Revocation of the licence is therefore mandatory under Section 27(1)(a) of the 1995 Act.

Priority Freight and Bryan Haulage questions

For the sake of completeness I asked myself if I could trust this operator to be compliant in the future (the Priority Freight question). The answer was an emphatic no. Mr Chawla did not at all convince me that he has the necessary knowledge, drive and determination to run a compliant operation. Moreover, the creation of false maintenance records which he passed to his [then] transport manager does not reflect well on him, even though he did not in the end submit them to the inquiry.

A negative answer to the Priority Freight question tends to suggest an affirmative answer to the Bryan Haulage question of whether the operator deserves to go out of business. Because of the serious nature of the shortcomings found by DVSA and in the run-up to the inquiry, I conclude that it does.

Decisions

Operator licence

I have concluded that the operator lacks professional competence, financial standing and good repute. I am therefore revoking the licence under Section 27(1)(a) of the 1995 Act. I am also revoking it under Section 26(1)(f) of the 1995 Act. Given that Mr Chawla told me that the company has ceased operating, I am allowing a shortened day period for the revocation to take effect. The revocation takes effect at 0001 hours on 10 November 2025.

Disqualification – operator

For the reasons outlined above, and having performed the same balancing act, I conclude that both the company and director Anmol Chawla should be disqualified under Section 28 of the 1995 Act from holding or obtaining an operator’s licence in the future and (in Mr Chawla’s case) from being the director of any company holding or obtaining such a licence. In deciding upon the length of the disqualification, I have taken account of paragraph 108 of the Senior Traffic Commissioner’s Statutory Guidance Document 10 which states that, for a first inquiry, a disqualification period of between one and three years could be the starting point. This is the operator’s first inquiry and on balance I conclude that a disqualification period of 12 months is appropriate. RMK Haulage Ltd and Anmol Chawla are thus disqualified from holding an operator licence until 10 November 2026. If Mr Chawla wishes to re-enter the industry he should first educate himself – before reapplying – about the responsibilities and duties of a road haulage operator.

Disqualification – transport manager

Having removed his good repute, I must also disqualify Raymond Rowland from acting as transport manager on any operator’s licence (paragraph 16 of Schedule 3 refers). He has been a largely absentee transport manager and has failed to exercise the most basic responsibilities of his position. If he felt that Mr Chawla was ignoring his advice (as he clearly did) he should have resigned as transport manager. Instead of which he carried on, in the full knowledge that the operation was not being managed compliantly. Only when a public inquiry was called did Mr Rowland resign his post. He has betrayed the trust that the public – through the traffic commissioner – place in him to manage the road transport operation continuously, effectively and safely. Mr Rowland is disqualified, with immediate effect, from being a transport manager for 12 months, until 4 November 2027.

Nicholas Denton

Deputy Traffic Commissioner

3 November 2025