Ronton record reviewed
Page 22
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• When he cut the duration of the licence held by Newportbased Ronton Haulage, South Wales licensing authority John Mervyn Pugh stressed that it was not his policy to give operators a "clean sheet".
Mervyn Pugh said that his policy to look to the future had been misunderstood in some quarters. An operator's record went into a "memory" and would be brought out again should further offences be committed. He was well aware that he had no power to grant a clean sheet, though it had been suggested in another place that that was what he was doing by not taking action against operators.
Ronton Haulage appeared before the LA because of a long list of convictions for excise licence offences, and Nor man Lloyd-Edwards, for the company, admitted that its financial structure had been distinctly shaky at the time.
A major customer, Maurice Prosser, had gone under owing Ronton 2108,625 but managing director Anthony Lewis had worked extremely hard to overcome the problem and all the back duty and fines had been paid.
Prematurely terminating the licence so that it expires at the end of next July, Mervyn Pugh said the last thing he wanted to do was to add to unemployment in South Wales. He did not want to revoke licences but he would do so if operators let him down. What had happened was a warning to hauliers not to. put all their eggs in one basket with a major customer.