0-licence revoked after Liquidation is revealed
Page 22
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Alliance Removals and Storage director has licence revoked after withholding firm's liquidation status
roger. brownfar bi k SOUTH FAST and Metropolitan Deputy Traffic Commissioner Miles Dorrington has revoked Alliance Removals and Storage's 0-licence after its director failed to disclose at a public inquiry in July that the firm was in liquidation.
In a written decision, following a second public inquiry in September, the DTC held that the company was not of good repute, that director Jayson Barrett had lost his good repute as an individual, director or partner, and disqualified him from holding or obtaining an 0-licence for nine months.
Alliance Removals and Storage, based in Storrington, West Sussex, had held an 0-licence authorising four vehicles and one trailer, with directors Barrett and his wife Joanne.
At the July public inquiry, the DTC allowed the surrender of the firm's 0-licence and accepted a new application from a new company — Alliance Home Delivery Service — with the same directors.
However, the DTCs office subsequently discovered that Alliance Removals and Storage had gone into administration earlier in the year.
Only when the DTC's staff wrote to Jayson Barrett after the inquiry did he admit the situation.
Jayson Barrett told Dorrington at the September public inquiry that he did not mention the liquidation because he feared the application for a new 0-licence would not be granted.
Barrett accepted he had withheld the information from the DTC at the public inquiry and misled him.
However, the DTC said Barrett's con
duct was "totally unacceptable".
He added: "In this case Mr Barrett misled me to obtain a new operator's licence because he feared that telling the truth would leave him without an operator's licence. There is little, if anything, that I can balance against this.
''Financial pressures or fears of losing business are not mitigation."
The DTC said he was satisfied Joanne Barrett was not involved in the transport side of the business and "played no part in her husband's deceit".
Dorrington said Alliance Home Delivery must also formally remove Jayson Barrett as a director as well as any controlling interest in that company he may have.