Compliance

What the New Traffic Commissioners' Annual Report Actually Shows

More operators went in front of a Traffic Commissioner this year than last. And when they did, the fastest growing outcome wasn't revocation. It was curtailment.

The Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain published their Annual Report for 2025-26 on 30 September 2026, covering the year to 31 March 2026. Buried in the statistical tables is a clearer picture than any headline summary gives you of where enforcement is actually heading, and it's worth operators reading past the press release.

More inquiries, and a shift in how they're resolved

Goods vehicle operators faced 783 completed public inquiries in 2025-26, up from 682 the year before, a rise of nearly 15%. Of those 783, only 37 ended with no action taken at all. That means roughly 95% of operators called to inquiry walked away with some regulatory consequence, consistent with previous years, so don't read this as commissioners suddenly getting harsher across the board.

What did shift is the mix of outcomes. Revocations rose only slightly (196 to 201), and as a share of inquiries, revocation actually became slightly less common, down from around 29% of cases to around 26%. Curtailment or conditions imposed, meanwhile, jumped from 221 to 291, a 32% increase in raw numbers, and rose from around 32% of inquiry outcomes to around 37%. Transport manager disqualifications rose from 81 to 87, licence holder disqualifications under Section 28 rose from 52 to 57, and suspensions rose from 66 to 73.

Put together, this looks less like commissioners reaching for the harshest available sanction more often, and more like them reaching for a more targeted one. Curtailment lets a commissioner restrict specific vehicles, operating centres, or conditions rather than pulling a licence outright, and it's increasingly the tool of choice.

Why that 95% isn't the odds for every operator

It's worth being precise about what that figure actually describes, because it's easy to read it the wrong way. Those 783 completed inquiries sit against roughly 64,246 goods vehicle operator licences in issue in 2025-26, so only around 1.2% of licensed operators had a public inquiry at all this year. The 95% isn't the odds facing any operator who holds a licence. It's the outcome for the small group who had already been referred.

That referral isn't random. DVSA builds an Operator Compliance Risk Score (OCRS) for every operator from roadside prohibitions, MOT results, traffic offences, and assessment outcomes, and uses it to decide who gets checked more often and who is more likely to generate the maintenance investigation that leads to a calling-in letter. The scoring isn't a simple average either. It's weighted by recency on a fixed three-year schedule: an event counts at full weight in year one, 75% weight in year two, and 50% weight in year three, before it finally clears. A serious roadside defect from two years ago is still actively dragging on an operator's score today, at half its original weight, regardless of what's changed in the business since.

That matters because it means an elevated score isn't a snapshot of this month's performance. It's closer to a scar that fades on a schedule nobody can speed up once the event has happened. By the time an operator is one of the 783, there's almost always a documented trail behind it already, and in some cases that trail includes events from two or three years back that are still partially counted.

That changes what this data actually tells you to do. The lesson isn't "perform well if you're ever called to inquiry." It's that inquiry outcomes are weighted so heavily toward sanction precisely because almost nobody arrives there without a history first. The leverage point is staying out of that history altogether, not managing the inspection or the investigation after the fact, because once an event lands on the score, you're not clearing it next week. You're waiting out the decay curve.

The backlog behind the numbers

The report also shows the system under real strain on timing. The Office of the Traffic Commissioner's own target is to get 95% of public inquiries listed, meaning given an actual hearing date, within 12 weeks of being called in. In 2025-26, only 77% were listed within that window, well short of their own goal. PSV licence applications are also running slower than target, averaging 42 days against a 35-day goal, while goods vehicle applications held to their 35-day target.

For an operator waiting on a hearing date, this isn't good news dressed up as good news. A longer wait before inquiry doesn't mean less scrutiny when it finally happens. It means more time spent in an uncertain position, and more time in which an existing problem can either get fixed properly or get worse.

What this means if you hold an O-licence

None of this changes what commissioners are actually looking for. It does suggest that if your operation does end up at inquiry, a straightforward "revoke or don't" outcome is less likely than it used to be, and a more granular, condition-based sanction is more likely. That's not automatically a lighter outcome. Curtailment still restricts how you can operate, and it still sits on the record.

The Traffic Commissioners' own strategic priorities for 2026-29 explicitly include modernising operator licensing while reducing regulatory burden on compliant businesses. Read plainly, that's a statement that the system intends to make life easier for operators who are genuinely compliant, and harder for those who aren't, which puts more weight than ever on being able to demonstrate the difference between the two before anyone else has to point it out.

The takeaway

The number worth remembering isn't 95%. It's 1.2%, the share of licensed operators who actually reach a public inquiry, alongside 32%, the growth in curtailment as commissioners' preferred middle-ground sanction, and a missed 95% listing target that landed at just 77%. Together they point to a system that catches a small, already-flagged group, handles more of those cases than last year, takes longer to schedule a hearing once it does, and reaches for more tailored outcomes when the hearing finally happens. None of that changes what good compliance looks like. It just raises the cost of ending up in that 1.2% in the first place.

If you'd like a clear picture of where your own operation stands against this year's standards, get in touch for a friendly, no-obligation conversation.

Sources

← All Insights