Andrew Eburne Gets 4 Years for £681,699 Bogus HGV Medical Fraud
Updated
Updated · BBC.com · Jun 19
Andrew Eburne Gets 4 Years for £681,699 Bogus HGV Medical Fraud
3 articles · Updated · BBC.com · Jun 19
Summary
Swansea Crown Court jailed Andrew Eburne, 51, for four years after convicting him of running Doctors on Wheels as a fraudulent HGV medical-testing business.
£681,699 of fraud was tied to cut-price D4 exams—sold for just under £60—where unqualified staff signed off drivers in vans at lay-bys and service stations, often within minutes.
Investigators found glaring safety failures: one profoundly deaf driver received a full pass, another with a glass eye was recorded as having perfect vision, and undercover officers were cleared under false identities.
The DVLA stopped accepting Doctors on Wheels forms in June 2019 after concerns first raised in 2017; one doctor was later struck off, another suspended, while a proceeds-of-crime hearing is due in December.
Thousands of drivers are thought to have used the bogus tests, leaving authorities and industry figures warning that some may still be on the road with licences obtained through unsafe assessments.
What is the DVLA's plan to re-evaluate thousands of potentially unfit drivers certified by the fraudulent company?
Could digital verification systems have prevented the widespread medical certificate fraud that endangered UK roads?
Should UK law financially reward whistleblowers who expose dangerous public safety frauds like this one?
Doctors on Wheels Scandal: £681,699 Fraud Exposes Dangerous Loopholes in HGV Medical Certification
Overview
Andrew Eburne, director of Doctors on Wheels Ltd, was convicted for running a fraudulent business that issued D4 medical certificates required for HGV licences. The scheme relied on unqualified staff conducting quick, inadequate medical checks—often in vans—and using pre-stamped forms with the signatures and GMC numbers of real doctors who were not present. This created a false sense of legitimacy and exploited weaknesses in the HGV licensing system. As a result, many drivers with health issues were wrongly certified as fit to drive, putting public safety at risk and prompting urgent regulatory action.