WHATEVER the outcome of the deliberations of the Committee now
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considering the Transport Bill I make this plea: Let us have a system which is geared to the industry it serves, let it be fast and adaptable. The present administration is cumbersome and delays which cause confusion are all too frequent.
The first case to cause the above comment was that of Manchester Freighters Ltd., of Tyldesley, Lancs., which had to withdraw an appeal recently after a point of law had been raised by the objecting Transport Holding Company.
The appellant company had a B licence expressed to expire on March 24 1967. It applied for "renewal" on February 13 1967, thus getting the benefit of section 169(3) of the Road Traffic Act, 1960; which allows an expiring licence to continue to be valid until the renewal application has been decided. But the renewal application had not been determined before another application (this time for an A licence in respect of some or all of the vehicles) was lodged in May, heard and refused in August and September, and made the subject of the appeal which had to be withdrawn on January 22 1968, the day before it was due to be heard.
The point of law which bowled over the company in January arose from Regulation 4(3) of the Goods Vehicles (Licences and Prohibitions) Regulations, 1960, which prevents an applicant from including in any application "a vehicle included in any other such application which is still under consideration by any Licensing Authority': It might be unfair to accuse the LA (or his staff) of lack of due diligence in disposing of the B renewal, because the company may itself have contributed to the delay to some extent by amending the renewal application at some unspecified time after February 13. But were the applications never linked together in the LA's office?
Invalid
The answer is: they must have been—if only during numbering, indexing and publishing. Yet neither the licensing clerk at that stage, nor the LA when he came to consider the A application, pointed out that the application was invalid according to Regulation 4(3). So all concerned lost much time and money.
In the East Midland Area, two applications made in 1965 (yes, 1965) by Mr. A. E. H. Dawson and Bramwells Haulage Ltd. were brought up at an Oxford public inquiry in November 1967. They had been taken to public inquiries in 1965 "but for a variety of reasons they were not called". Here again, the applicants may have contri
buted to the delay, but what prevented the LA from bringing the broth to the boil earlier? (The eventual refusal of the applications has been made the subject of High Court proceedings.) Other signs of rust have appeared in several other Traffic Areas, including the Metropolitan, Scotland and Northern. The trouble has arisen over renewal, variation and take-over applications. It has taken three different forms.
In the first group, the licence-holder applies for a renewal without modification, but before that has been decided, applies also for a variation (to add a vehicle, for instance). Dissatisfied with the decision on the variation, he appeals. But by the time the appeal is due for hearing, a new licence has been granted in place of the old one, which cannot therefore be varied. The licence which was to have been varied having died, the appeal cannot be entertained. (The appeals of J. Sey v Burgess Transport (Keith) Ltd. and Others, Walker v B.T.C., R. J. Howlett and Co. Ltd. v B.T.C., R. Cornell Ltd. and Others v Regan Bros. (Haulage) Ltd. and F. and D. R. Walsh v Transport Holding Company and Another are five cases in point.
Second group
The second group concerns changes in legal entity or take-over of businesses. Some person or company applies to take over the unexpired portion of someone else's licence, but before the take-over application has been granted, the licence-holder applies to vary the old licence.
The variation application having been refused, an appeal is lodged; but again by the time the appeal comes up for hearing, the take-over has been granted and the old licence which was to have been varied is dead; and the appeal Tribunal rules that it cannot put a new heart into a dead body. There have been four such cases (with slight differences in each) during the past few years, those of John Hodgson Haulage Ltd. of Liverpool (April 13 1966 and February 6 1967) being classics of their kind.
The third group concerns death or bankruptcy of a licence-holder. Regulation 21 of the Licences and Prohibitions Regulations describes what steps a successor or a trustee for creditors must take. One such step is to notify the LA of the death or bankruptcy within the prescribed time; another is to apply for a new licence in the manner required.
In M. Allan (Carriers) Ltd. v Hugh Clelland and Son and Others the trustee of a licence-holder named Wood took neither step. Nevertheless when later M. Allan Ltd. appealed against refusal of its take-over application for the Wood business, the Tribunal disagreed with the LA that because of the trustee's shortcoming, an agreement between the latter, Mr. Wood and the appellants had no relevance so far as the licences previously held by Mr. Wood were concerned. "It was the LA's duty to consider the applications on their merits and not to refuse them upon that technical ground."
Correspondence in COMMERCIAL MOTOR_ some time ago suggested that the licenceholders in the first group were the authors of their own misfortunes. To some extent they were. But they could also claim to have been victims of slack staff work in the Licensing Authority offices. The exercise of elementary common sense by the clerks there should have led them, knowing as they were bound to know that appeals had been lodged, to hold up any further action on the renewal applications until the appeals had been decided.
Remedy for the second group of cases is less simple, but even there the possibility of confusion should have been spotted by the licensing clerks dealing with the documents or by the LAs when the take-over and variation applications were put before them for decision. A drop of oil at that stage would have saved much friction.
What is often forgotten is that the haulage industry is never static. While the many weeks or months between lodging and deciding applications are elapsing, the work of the world has to go on. Things happen; traffic changes; new vehicles are required. Hauliers have to be adaptable. The licensing machine ought to be adaptable, too.