Licence dispute at dairy
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• Lancashire dairy firm JE&AR Taylor is at the centre of a dispute over whether an operating centre is "available for use" as a centre for a standard national licence, even though it was used for some years with a restricted licence.
The firm is now waiting for the ruling of Deputy Traffic Commissioner Mark Hinchliffe.
North Western Commissioner Keith Waterworth had refused an application by the firm to change its restricted licence into a standard national licence after the site owner, Lancashire County Council, had said it did not agree that goods vehicles should be kept there. But the Transport Tribunal said the decision did not necessarily mean that Pollards Farm could not be used as an operating centre and directed that the application be reconsidered.
Paul Carless, for JE&AR Taylor, said it wanted to carry return loads, it pledged not to take third-party goods into or out of Pollards Farm, nor to store them or to trans-ship them there. The firm had two other operating centres in the North-West, said Carless, and if third-party goods had to stay on a vehicle overnight it could be kept at one of those centres.
The regulations did not provide for the separate use of the three centres as standard national and restricted centres, he added. But Patrick Sadd, for the county, insisted that the firm would be carrying other people's goods and the vehicles would be kept at Pollards Farm.
Hinchliffe will give a written decision.