The entire fleet of “Yellow Duckmarine” tour buses – two of which sank in a Liverpool dock earlier this year – have been repossessed according to a news report in the Liverpool Daily Post today (23rd August).
As previously reported by Unionsafety not only were the vehicles involved in accidents this year, but previously in 2010, a wheel came off one of the vehicles as it was being driven full of tourists through the city centre during the rush hour.
The vehicles are basically converted old World War II amphibious craft having been built in the USA in 1942 and as such, spare parts are hard to come by, making maintenance of the ‘marine’ vehicles problematic.
Add to the that fact, according to some commentators, that the company running the tour buses up until 2010 had no Health & Safety Officer or a thorough and appropriate Health and Safety policy; and it is easy to see that this situation was going to happen sooner or later.
Thankfully, no one has been seriously injured or killed amongst the public, although stress and other workplaces issues have dogged the company’s workforce for many years. Only this year one of the company’s previous employees took out an employment tribunal against the company, although in the end, the case was dropped.
This is not entirely unusual to happen, given the stress upon individuals of bringing a case in the first place, and does not infer innocence or guilt of the company with regard to the claims made in the tribunal case.
The amphibious vehicles, which ran on Liverpool’s streets and were popular for their “splashdown” finale in Salthouse Dock, had been acquired under a hire-purchase agreement, according to the newspaper report, by the business which ran the tours, Pearlwild Ltd.
Pearlwild is now in administration, with the vehicles having been seized by the company which had financed them.
On Wednesday of this week the company lost its licence to run the buses on the city’s roads, no doubt as a result of the incidents of misadventure earlier this year. The repossession took place due to their being no way of saving the business as a result.
Colin Burke, partner at Milner Boardman, said that there was no way of saving the business as a result of the not-surprising loss of the road vehicle licence for the fleet of buses and that a combination of the company’s financial outlook and the ongoing investigations into the sinking of two of the craft earlier this year made for a bleak picture.
As reported at the time by Unionsafety, the second incident, which resulted in dozens of adult and child passengers needing treated at the Royal Liverpool hospital after being rescued from the water in June, triggered a second probe by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB). Despite this being the second time they have had to investigate incidents involving the craft within the Salthouse Dock itself, there has still not been any revocation of the vehicle’s licence to operate as a water vehicle.
While the traffic commissioner, who regulates the buses for use on the roads, has already issued a revocation, the outcome of the MAIB investigation could still be some months away.
Mr Colin Burke is quoted by the Liverpool Daily Post as explaining:
“The problems we encountered were too great and there were no guarantees that we could satisfy the authorities due to technical problems with the fleet. We are now winding down the business.
All the staff and the vehicles have been repossessed – they were all on HP and the company has taken them back.”
Other duck tours, which are not connected to the Liverpool operation, run successfully in Dublin and London.
Commenting upon the news item in the Post’s reader’s comments section of the article, Chris Ingram, web editor wrote:
“This is a typical situation when a company does not take Health and Safety seriously nor that of vehicle maintenance. As far as I am aware, this company up until 2010 did not have a thorough and appropriate health and safety policy governing its staff and vehicles, nor did it have an appropriately trained Health and Safety Officer. Its staff worked long hours and had to do make-shift repairs to vehicles on many occasions.
This has been a long time coming and we are lucky no one has actually been fatally injured. Given the Government's attack on all things to do with H&S, this situation of companies going out of business will occur more and more. Further, deaths and injury of workers will multiply in many industries the government classes as so-called ‘low risk’.”
Source: Liverpool Daily Post / Unionsafety
See also: Incomplete Investigation Of Previous Sinking Of Yellow Duckmarine Shows Profit’s Put Before Safety
