PG9 Prohibitions Explained: Costs, OCRS Impact, and How to Avoid Them
What a PG9 prohibition really costs UK operators — the fines, the OCRS damage, the Traffic Commissioner risk — and how daily checks prevent most.
A PG9 is a prohibition notice issued by a DVSA examiner or police officer when a vehicle defect is serious enough to make it unsafe or unroadworthy. It is a legal order, not a warning: the vehicle cannot be used until the defect is fixed and the prohibition is cleared. Every PG9 is recorded on the operator's compliance record and damages the operator's OCRS score.
I'm a working Class 1 driver. I've stood at the roadside during DVSA checks, and I've seen what a single piece of paper handed through a cab window does to a small fleet's week. This guide covers what a PG9 actually is, what it really costs (spoiler: the fine is the cheap part), how it hits your OCRS, and the boring, repeatable habits that prevent most of them.
What is a PG9 prohibition notice?
When a DVSA examiner or police constable inspects a vehicle — at the roadside, at a check site, or during a visit to your operating centre — and finds a defect that makes the vehicle unsafe or non-compliant, they issue form PG9. From that moment the vehicle is prohibited from being driven until the defect is repaired and the prohibition is formally removed.
Two things drivers and new operators often get wrong:
- A PG9 follows the operator, not just the driver. It's recorded on your compliance record and feeds your OCRS — and serious cases are reported to the Traffic Commissioner.
- It's not only a roadside thing. DVSA can issue prohibitions during maintenance investigations at your yard too.
Immediate vs delayed prohibitions (and the S-mark)
| Type | What it means | Typical trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Immediate PG9 | Vehicle stops now. It cannot move — sometimes not even to a garage — without permission or recovery. | Dangerous defects: exposed tyre cord, major brake faults, insecure loads |
| Delayed PG9 | Vehicle can keep working for up to 10 days, then is prohibited until fixed. | Serious defects that aren't an instant danger |
| S-marked PG9 | Either of the above, marked "S" for significant maintenance failure — the examiner believes the defect should have been caught by your own systems. | A defect an ordinary walkaround check would have found |
The S-mark is the one that should worry you most. It tells DVSA — and eventually the Traffic Commissioner — that your maintenance system failed, not just one vehicle on one day. A pattern of S-marked prohibitions is a classic route to a Public Inquiry.
What does a PG9 actually cost?
The direct costs are the smallest part. Here's the realistic bill for a small operator:
| Cost | Ballpark |
|---|---|
| Roadside fixed penalties (defect-dependent) | £50–£300 per offence |
| Recovery of an immediately prohibited artic | £500–£1,500+ |
| Emergency roadside/garage repair premium | Varies — always more than planned maintenance |
| Lost revenue while the vehicle sits | £500–£800+ per day for a working truck |
| Missed delivery / customer penalty clauses | Contract-dependent, reputation always |
| OCRS deterioration → more stops → more lost hours | Compounds for up to 3 years |
| Insurance premium reviews after repeat notices | Ongoing |
| Worst case: Public Inquiry, licence curtailment or revocation | The business |
A £150 fixed penalty attached to a £3,000 week is the honest way to think about it.
How a PG9 affects your OCRS score
Your Operator Compliance Risk Score is the traffic-light system (green / amber / red) DVSA uses to decide who gets stopped and who gets a yard visit. It's built from a rolling three-year window of every DVSA encounter — roadside inspections, annual test results, prohibitions, fixed penalties, drivers' hours and tachograph offences.
The mechanics that matter:
- Every PG9 adds points. Points are bad. More points push you toward amber and red.
- Severity is weighted. An immediate prohibition scores worse than a delayed one; S-marks make it worse again.
- Recency is weighted. A prohibition last month hurts more than one two years ago — but everything stays in the calculation for three years.
- Red and amber operators get stopped more. Which creates more encounters, more chances for points, and a spiral that's genuinely hard to escape.
- Green-band operators get stopped less — and a clean, consistent compliance record is what puts you in a position to apply for DVSA Earned Recognition, a separate scheme with its own criteria (members even get their own blue OCRS band): fewer stops still, and better standing with customers and insurers. Joining means passing an audit of your systems and records, which our complete guide to the DVSA Earned Recognition audit walks through section by section.
One PG9 will not destroy a good score. A PG9 plus a poor annual-test record plus a couple of drivers' hours infringements will — and small fleets have fewer encounters, so each one moves the needle further.
What to do if you receive a PG9 (step by step)
- Don't argue at the roadside. Get the paperwork, photos of the defect, and the examiner's instructions.
- Confirm the type. Immediate or delayed? S-marked? This decides whether the truck moves at all.
- Fix the defect properly — through your normal maintenance provider, with records.
- Get the prohibition cleared. The vehicle must pass a clearance inspection before it works again; don't quietly put it back on the road.
- Investigate the root cause. DVSA and the Traffic Commissioner expect you to treat a PG9 like a failed MOT: why did your system miss it?
- Check whether it's reportable to the Traffic Commissioner, and keep every record — daily check sheets and maintenance records must be retained for at least 15 months.
How to avoid PG9s in the first place
Here's the uncomfortable truth from the driver's seat: most prohibitions are for defects a proper daily walkaround check would have caught. Tyres, brakes and lights top the list year after year — exactly the items on the walkaround.
The operators who rarely see a PG9 do the same unglamorous things:
- Daily walkaround checks that actually happen — with proof they happened, not a signature scribbled at week's end. A nil-defect report from a check that never took place is worse than no report at all.
- Every reported defect gets an owner, a deadline, and a sign-off. The most damning PG9 is one for a defect a driver reported days earlier that nobody actioned.
- Safety inspections on schedule — typically every 4–6 weeks for hard-working HGVs — with documented reasons for any deviation.
- Records you can produce instantly. If an examiner issues a PG9 and you can't show the latest daily check, expect things to escalate.
- Check your own OCRS regularly through the DVSA portal — for trends and for recording errors.
None of this is complicated. It fails when it depends on paper, memory, and chasing drivers for sheets. That's the entire reason I'm building HaulGuard — a walkaround check app designed by someone who actually does the checks, in English and Romanian, so every driver on a mixed fleet can report defects properly in the language they think in.