Number of vehicles relevant to application—Tribunal
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Judgment in Mid-Southern appeal
GIVING reasons for its dismissal of the appeals by the Mid-Southern Tipping Group Ltd. against refusal of B licences for members of the group who engage in tipping contracts obtained by the group, the Transport Tribunal said on Wednesday that to have granted the applications would be to divest all Licensing Authorities within the radius named in the applications of all effective control over any project for which the group might successfully tender. The 25 appeals took eight days to hear.
In particular, no Licensing Authority would have an opportunity of considering whether hauliers licensed to operate in the vicinity of any civil engineering work could provide the necessary transport facilities.
To argue (as the appellants did) that the number of vehicles involved was irrelevant in the consideration of any licence application under the 1960 Act was a far too narrow view of the matter.
The Tribunal admitted there was no doubt that the group's activities were beneficial both to its members and to the civil engineering industry; but that was no reason for exercising the Tribunal's discretion in such a way as to negate the provisions of the 1960 Road Traffic Act.
To grant licences in order to avoid inconvenience would be to usurp the functions of the legislature, said the Tribunal.
It would also be to deny to hauliers already holding licences fair consideration of their interests. So far as the appeals were concerned, any feeling that the appellants might have been hardly treated must be dispelled by the fact that the group had successfully tendered for at least three contracts and had carried them out notwithstanding the shackles imposed on their activities by the licensing system.
The Tribunal also felt it could not accept the contention that, because the application unquestionably was in the interests of commercial undertakings requiring services of hauliers, the licences should have been granted under the provisions of Section 174(4) of the 1960 Act. This required the LA, in exercising his discretion, to have regard for the interests of the public generally, including primarily those of persons requiring facilities for transport.
This discretion, said the Tribunal, was a judicial one and could not be governed by any private notion of what was in the interests of the public generally. The intention of the Act was that there should be a sufficiency, but not a superfluity, of transport facilities.
Barbara to Perform Sunderland Launching? Sunderland Town Council was expected at its meeting this week to invite Mrs. Barbara Castle, Minister of Transport, to launch the new flat-fare and token system due for introduction on September I.