PG9 prohibitions and annual test failures. Find the cause before anyone asks for it.

Nobody forgets their first PG9. A curtainsider parked up on a slip road, a driver on the phone, a load due in at the RDC for six. Getting the prohibition lifted is the part everybody concentrates on. What counts afterwards is whether you can show how the defect got there and what you changed so it does not happen again.

Immediate, delayed and S marked

GOV.UK’s page on roadside prohibitions sets out the two kinds. With an immediate prohibition the vehicle cannot be driven until the problem is fixed. A delayed prohibition gives up to 10 days, and less when there is a safety-critical defect: up to 3 days for more than one, 4 to 7 days for one. To have it removed the lorry or trailer goes to an authorised testing facility for a full or partial inspection, and a pass brings a prohibition removal notice.

An S mark means the examiner considers the defect a sign of a significant failure in your roadworthiness compliance, and DVSA will then look at your maintenance procedures. An immediate S marked prohibition usually means the vehicle is immobilised, and the operator could also be prosecuted. DVSA’s maintenance investigation questions describe the other marking, X, for a defect of an entirely random nature that the driver would not have noticed.

What the examiner does with them

In a maintenance investigation the examiner assesses the roadworthiness prohibitions over the last three years of encounters and tests, and confirms or changes the S or X marking by checking your records. A trend of prohibitions for safety-critical defects is a reason for the visit to be reported to the traffic commissioner. The examiner also carries out a detailed analysis of the last 15 months of inspection records. A PG9 with a repair invoice stapled to it leaves most of their questions open.

PG9 records

Each prohibition goes on the vehicle it was issued to, lorry or trailer, as a PG9 record with its defects and, when it comes, the clearance. The defects go onto the defects list and a workshop job straight away, and the PG9 counts in your OCRS tracking. A roadside encounter that ended in a prohibition with no PG9 on file offers to record one, filled in from the encounter.

The prohibition investigation

Each PG9 gets its own investigation, and HGVault links what it already holds:

• the notice itself
• the workshop job that put the defects right
• the last full safety inspection on that vehicle
• the clearance
• the driver’s walkaround from that day

Then it lists the evidence that is missing. No walkaround on the day, or the last inspection sheet never signed off in the office, and you find out while there is still time to do something about it. The facts about each item concerned sit alongside, so the history of that brake chamber or that steer tyre is in front of you.

Follow-up actions take an owner and a due date, as actions from a self-check do. The finished investigation is signed with your saved signature and printed as a PDF to file with the PG9 on the vehicle file.

Failed annual tests

The annual test is the other place a maintenance system shows its cracks. The examiner works out your final fail rate, with PRS taken out, and for a satisfactory answer it must not be above the national average. HGVault treats a failure, or a pass after rectification, the way it treats a prohibition. The MOT investigation lines up the pre-test inspection and its brake test, the three safety inspections before it, the repair, the retest and the walkaround. Laid side by side, it is usually plain whether the defect was missed, was new, or was spotted and never put right.

With DVSA’s MOT history switched on, each lorry’s results arrive by themselves with their defects and the testing station. A failed latest test opens a workshop job with every failure item on it, and the advisories wait on the list for the next safety inspection. The lookup goes by registration, so a trailer’s test result is entered by the office.

SIPCAT analysis

DVSA’s safety inspection period calculator and analysis tool is a spreadsheet for picking through inspection records. HGVault fills in its rows from your records for any period and any vehicles: due and done by ISO week, VOR cover for a late one, the braking assessment, dangerous defects and whether a driver had reported them, and PG9s. Anything the records cannot answer is suggested with the reason, and the office confirms or changes each answer.

How it feeds the self-check

Prohibitions, S marks and test history all go into the maintenance investigation self-check. An investigation does not make a prohibition go away. It does show that somebody looked at it properly and changed something.