KLG Trucking SRL -v- SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 737
A long-awaited decision from the Court of Appeal under the new Carriers Liability (amendment) Regulations 2023 has been handed down.
The key findings relate to the following:
[24] The word “afterwards” in regulations 2E(2) and 2E(3) refers to the relevant action rather than to the journey. In other words, the owner/hirer must make a written record as soon as practicable after ensuring that an action has been taken or a sign has been noted.
[25] The owner/hirer obligations and those of the driver can be satisfied with a single document. There is no need to have one record for the owner/hirer and a separate one for the driver.
[28] Regulation 2C(2) requires the driver to perform the “standard checks” set out in the schedule to the 2002 regulations “during each occasion the vehicle is parked during a journey.” No such obligation is, however, imposed on the owner/hirer.
[30] An owner/hirer must ensure that steps are taken as specified in regulation 2B before a vehicle embarks on a journey, not whenever a new leg of the journey is to begin.
[39]-[43] Although these paragraphs are quite fact-specific to KLG, it helps tighten up what has been a rather liberal approach by Border Force in finding in the IS11 forms that the owner/hirer has breached this regulation.
[49] The mere fact that a vehicle owner has not been shown to have failed to comply with the 2002 regulations provides a good reason either for declining to impose any penalty or for imposing one at a level lower than indicated by the Penalty Code. Nexways (although a county court decision) is not to be followed.
Transport Law NI 