Herding Blicensees into Small Areas
Page 33
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
CONSIDER ABLE dissatisfaction is reported to exist among B-licence holders in the Yorkshire Area in connection with the renewal of licences. Complaint is made that time after time, when applicants have admitted under cross-examination that, during the past 12 months, they have not operated to the full extent of their authorized radius, the Licensing Authority has reduced the radius to the farthest point to which they have actually operated.
Critics of this procedure argue that the policy of imposing such further restrictions, merely on the basis of 12 months' operation, is unjustifiable and contrary to the intention of the Act.
Interviewed by a correspondent, Mr. F, G. Bibbings, A.R.O. Yorkshire Area secretary, said he feared that, if this policy were continued, there would soon be so many B-licence operators drastically restricted to radii of 10-15 miles, that larger numbers would be scrambling for traffic within a circumscribed area. In his opinion, this competition would be bound to result in an excess of facilities within these limits, and there would he a tendency to uneconomic working which would greatly hamper stabilization rates. .
Speaking generally, B-licensees, who depended upon haulage to the extent of 80-95 per cent, of their total turnover, received no more freedom of operation than the B-licence applicant who relied upon haulage for, say, only 30 per cent, of his total turnoyei. •
Another instance of the further restriction of the B-licence operator, in lather a different category from the cases previously mentioned, occurred at a Leeds sitting of the Yorkshire Licensing Authority, last week, on an application for a renewal of a B licence.
The applicant held an A licence until December of last year, but, as he became interested in a coal business, he then obtained a B licence, one of its conditions providing for the conveyance of sand and gravel within a radius of 20 Miles. At last week's hearing of his renewal application, he admitted that, owing to pressure of other work, he had not carried sand and gravel during the past 12 months, although he had done so for six years previously.
The railway representative asked that permission to carry sand and gravel should be deleted from the licence, with which request the Licensing Authority concurred.