Doctors on Wheels boss convicted over fake HGV medical tests

A mobile medical business that sold D4 tests for just under £60 has ended in a conviction over a fraud that regulators feared could have left unsafe lorry and bus drivers on the road. Swansea Council said Andrew Eburne, 51, of Hill Rise, Burbage, Hinckley, was found guilty of operating a fraudulent business through Doctors on Wheels Ltd after a years-long investigation that began with concerns from the DVLA.

The D4 medical report is the form the DVLA requires for lorry and bus driving licence applications. It applies to Group 2 licensing, including HGV and PCV drivers, where the medical standard is stricter than for ordinary car licences because the risk to public safety is higher. Doctors on Wheels marketed itself as a cheap mobile option, carrying out medicals in modified vans at truck stops and lay-bys while undercutting competitors.

Regulators moved against the firm in June 2019, when the DVLA said it would no longer accept D4 medical reports from Doctors on Wheels for applications submitted after 20 June. Drivers affected by the move had to resubmit their applications, and the DVLA said it could not reimburse the medical fees. Police raids on the company’s offices in Swindon, Leicester and Huddersfield were also reported as the investigation widened.

Later court reporting said the DVLA first raised concerns in March 2019 and then ran its own mystery shopper style operation before the case was passed to Swansea Council Trading Standards. The council said the company was thought to have processed thousands of D4 medical certificates, a scale that raised questions about how many commercial drivers may have been cleared through a system that should have protected the public from unfit heavy-vehicle operators.

Six people went on trial over the alleged fraud, which the prosecution said spanned 21 months. The court heard that some medicals took only minutes and were carried out by people who were not UK-qualified medics, even though the forms carried real doctors’ signatures. That combination of speed, shortcutting and false assurance is what made the case more than a paperwork scam: it was an enforcement failure with road-safety consequences.