Application wrongly advertised
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• Merthyr Tydfil-based C&S Haulage had a licence application refused because it had been wrongly advertised, but within 24 hours South Wales Licensing Authority John Mervyn Pugh granted the company a five-vehicle interim licence.
The LA was told that the company had placed an advert in a local paper in January saying it was seeking to change an existing licence, when in fact it did not have a licence.
Director Clive Burrows said that he had taken over the business from his father and had not realised that the application had been wrongly advertised, He had taken out a second mortgage, ploughed all his savings into the company and was operating on an overdraft.
Refusing the company's licence application, Mervyn Pugh said that he had no alternative. The current interim authority was consequently dead and sadly the company was out of business. The company had had since August to take advice.
Many people believed that a full licence grant was a formality once interim authority had been granted, said Mervyn Pugh, but that was not the case.
Granting a fresh interim licence to start the next day, Mervyn Pugh said he had been impressed by the way that Burrows had gone off and corrected his mistakes, put a fresh advert in the newspaper, seen a traffic examiner and paid the necessary fees for a fresh application.
Everyone had enormous sympathy, said Mervyn Pugh. Burrows was a young man trying to make a go of things, even if he had made an awful mess of it.
He advised Burrows to seek legal advice. There was a history of vehicles parked in laybys and outside houses, and this had to stop. He also advised him not to invest any more money until his substantive licence application had been sorted out.