Police object to demolition arm's application
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• A Bury, Lancashire demolition company whose counsel said the company lad spent more than £20,000 on new vehicles and other equipment in the past :hree years had its application for a further .wo vehicles with another four to be acquired adjourned by the North Western LA, Mr C. Hodgson, at Manchester this week after evidence that two vehicles it verated on an interim licence had had .mmediate GV9s placed on them after a visit by a vehicle examiner.
The application was by Briggs Demolition Ltd, of Tottington, Bury, and was objected to by the police, the first such hiection in the traffic area under the 1968 Transport Act. The police did not consider :hat the applicant, Mrs M. B. Briggs, had sufficient knowledge of the haulage industry to run the company in which her husband, an undischarged bankrupt, was employed by her as manager. Mr P. Wynn, vehicle examiner, described the two vehicles he had examined as being in a shocking condition; one had seven and the other nine defects and in addition no proper records were being kept. Miss A. Klonin, for Mrs Briggs, said her client had successfully run the business For the past three years carrying out banking, invoicing and contracts. The demolition business was a lucrative one; five trucks had been acquired recently at a cost of £900 each and in one year more than 1700 had been spent on weekly maintenance checks. Miss Klonin produced a number of garage receipts but Mr Hodgson explained they were not proper records under the Act. Mrs Briggs undertook to keep proper records in the future and told the LA the lorries and other equipment were in fact owned by her father-in-law.
Mr Hodgson then said that the application was made in Mrs Briggs's name and would therefore have to be withdrawn and made again under the name of both Mrs Briggs and her father-in-law. In the meantime he extended the firm's interim licence for eight vehicles for six months and asked a vehicle examiner to ensure that proper records were kept in future.
Mr Hodgson told Mrs Briggs: "Until you keep proper records 1 do not regard you as a proper haulage operator."