New Camp Service Appeal Decided
Page 36
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THE appeal of Messrs. Safeway Services against a decision of the Western Licensing Authority refusing to grant a new licence for express services from Houndstone Army Camp to Birmingham and London, and granting similar licences to Messrs. Darch and Wilcox for the same routes, has been dismissed with costs. The appellants' case was based on the large number ofServicemen carried by them from the camp to Yeovil from 1948 to 1951.
For the respondents it was held that Messrs. Safeway Services had operated only under contract and the establishedoperator principle did not apply to nonlicensed services.
Recommending the dismissal of the appeal, •Mr. E. C. P. Lascelles, an inspector of the Ministry of Transport, said that he did not agree that privatehire work should necessarily be excluded from consideration in determining whether an operator should be regarded as an "existing operator." It might he difficult, however, to determine the value of such operations in practice where the legality might be in doubt He added that in this case the Servicemen found that the respondents' vehicles were cleaner and more comfortable and a lower fare was offered. It was open to the Licensing Authority to find in favour of the respondents.
PROOF OF NEED FOR C LICENCE
OPPONENTS of the C licence had been urging that a trader should have to prove need before he could operate his own vehicles, said Mr. R. E. G. Brown, secretary of the London and Home Counties Division of the Traders' Road Transport Association, when he addressed Clacton Chamber of Commerce, last week. The Association held that the fact that a trader operated his own vehicles wa's in itself proof of need.
Under present law, recognition -was given to the fundamental point that every trader should have the right to a free choice of transport, including his own. No one ran his own vehicles for the fun of it, but because there was no other form of haulage which could supply him with the same service as he gained from his own machines._