LAs — best of both worlds
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OF ALL THE officials of one sort or another whose activities impinge on those who try to make a living out of road transport, none is more important than the Licensing Authority.
In the middle of last month, while the LAs were engaged in one of their thrice-yearly conferences with senior Department of Transport officials, the Department announced plans for reducing the number of Traffic Areas, and hence of LAs, from the 11 which have existed since licensing began over 50 years ago, to eight, and eventually to seven. This is therefore an appropriate moment to look at the role of the LA in the administration, application and enforcement of road traffic law.
LAs wear two hats, since they are also chairmen of the Traffic Commissioners who deal with passenger licensing matters in their Traffic Areas. But the passenger work, though more often in the public eye, has always been less timeconsuming than the freight work. Recent changes in passenger licensing law, and impending changes on the freight side will make the balance even more one-sided. This article will therefore concentrate on their freight role, though much of what is said applies to the whole range of their activities.
LAs are appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport. No specific qualification is required. Although legal training and experience are obviously useful, only three of the present nine LAs are professionally qualified lawyers. Nor do they have to be appointed from within the Civil Service. The normal practice is to alternate between those within and those without. Of the existing nine LAs, five were civil servants before being appointed, including two of the three with legal qualifications.
All but one came from the DTp; the exception is the Scottish LA, who came from the Scottish Office. Of the remainder, two came direct from the Army, one is a former town clerk (the third lawyer) and one was a senior colonial policeman. No woman has ever been appointed, but this seems bound to happen soon.
They have a status different from that of civil servants, though they are paid on the maximum of the Assistant Secretary scale, currently £22,200 per annum, and their leave and other conditions of service are identical to those of civil servants of that grade.
There are three significant differences. First, whereas civil servants can, in theory at least, be sacked, LAs have a tenure of office similar to that of judges.
Second, they have a statutory right to hold their office until the age of 70, whereas civil servants of similar grade normally have to retire at 60.
Third, the Secretary of State for Transport is not politically responsible for their actions as he is, again in theory, for his officials.
Privately, LAs will admit that they have the best of both worlds — the security and prerequisites of a civil servant (including an index-linked pension) and the freedom from the constraints on a civil servant's public activities.
In general, the industry seems very satisfied with the system. There was no suggestion in evidence to either the Foster Committee or the Armitage Inquiry that it should be fundamentally altered. The LAs themselves seem to be held in genuine high regard by those whose affairs come before them, and certainly they include some impressive characters in their ranks.
Nevertheless, there are internal tensions between the LAs and the DTp, though these rarely see the light of day. They stem mainly from the somewhat ambiguous status that the LA enjoys. When he is dealing with licensing matters pure and simple there is no problem. He is administering the law, and there are legal avenues of appeal — to the Transport Tribunal in 0licensing matters, or to the magistrates or sheriff where hgv driver licences are concerned.
No one wants to alter this state of affairs. The problems start when the LA leaves his Court and starts to carry out his many other non-judicial duties.
The 11 Traffic Areas have a total staff exceeding 4,000 in number, an average of almost 400 each. The LA is at the summit of this large manpower pyramid, and inevitably is called upon to carry out many of the managerial roles that fall to any civil servant in charge of an office of that sort — for example the DTp's own Regional Controllers. In this managerial role they are expected to conform to the DTp's rules.
The tensions arise because there is no clear dividing line between judicial and managerial functions. This comes to public notice in two main areas — enforcement and financial information.
The enforcement difficulty was brought into public view by the Foster Report, which devoted a whole chapter to this. It revealed, albeit in guarded terms, a feeling in the DTp that LAs were not responsive enough to the Department's wishes in enforcement matters, notably in the severity of penalties. But the recommended solution would have been so expensive in manpower that it was never seriously considered by the Department. Nevertheless, the problem, and the resulting tensions, remain.
More recently, the Prime Minister's personal hatchet man Sir Derek Rayner, as part of his task of simplifying Government forms, discovered that many LAs supplement the basic 0licence application form GV79 with locally produced forms, mainly seeking financial information. These forms are all different, which causes problems for operators with licences in more than one Traffic Area.
Sir Derek is reported to have been distinctly unamused when told that the LA's judicial independence prevented him from imposing uniformity, and it was only when he learnt that Foster and Armitage had recently given the system a clean bill of health that he was persuaded not to extend his inquiry beyond form design into the principle of licensing.
Despite the tensions, matters never come to crisis point because both sides to the argument realise that the system would be unlikely to survive a really serious row, and they are therefore disposed to compromise.
But it would be surprising if there were not those in Marsham Street who look forward to having to deal in future with only seven fiercely independent LAs instead of the 11 they have had to face for the last 50 years.