How are you going to enforce compliance?
Because the new laws focus on what the companies are doing to ensure safety standards are met, our focus will be on their systems and what they are doing to keep their services safe, rather than on trying to have a cop on every corner chasing down drivers.
While our initial focus is on education and partnering with industry to promote compliance, where necessary, we will take enforcement action.
This includes:
- issuing improvement and prohibition notices
- issuing penalties
- prosecution, and
- taking action against authorisations and licences which may include imposing conditions or cancellation.
In deciding what enforcement action to take, we will consider factors including the seriousness of the offence, the level of safety risk, prior history and the level of public interest.
What is the audit process? Who will be conducting the audits? Who has to pay?
All authorised service providers, whether small or large, will be subject to safety audits.
The Commission will employ qualified external auditors, trained in understanding the needs and diversity of the point to point transport industry.
In some instances the Commission will pay for the audit, and in others the service providers will be required to cover costs.
The Commission has produced a Safety Audit Tool and Fact Sheet, which may help you to determine the kinds of safety standards we will be monitoring. And as time goes on, we will also publish best practice examples on our website for others to review.
The audit program is risk-based and led by intelligence. This means that we will use the information available to us to decide when and where to conduct audits. This approach will become more streamlined and targeted in the coming months, as we gather more information and feedback from industry.
An audit must be organised and completed within a 6 week period, and an audit notice must be issued to a service provider more than 24 hours in advance. The notice will be made in writing, will explain the purpose of the audit and provide general information on what will be audited and what information the service provider should prepare.
Note: an audit notice can only be issued by the Point to Point Transport Commissioner, and/or Authorised Officers.
How do we report people doing the wrong thing?
If you see someone doing the wrong thing, you should report it to the relevant authorised service provider.
Certain accidents or incidents (called notifiable occurrences) must be reported to the Point to Point Transport Commissioner.