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Investment grants for hydrogen trailers
Page 33
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BOC'S SUCCESS AGAINST BoT
• The British Oxygen Co., in the Chancery Division last week, substantially won its action claiming that its large and small liquid gas tankers, hydrogen trailers and portable gas cylinders were eligible for investment cash grants under the provisions of the Industrial Development Act 1966 (CM April 5). Under the terms of the Act, vehicles (with certain exceptions) are not eligible for grants.
The defendants were the Board of Trade and the case was said to be of great importance to the industry, with the amount at stake in terms of investment grants of about Elm.
The company claimed that the items in question ranked as plant, machinery or storage equipment, used in the process of manufacturing industrial gases.
The decisions made by Mr. Justice Buckley on Wednesday of last week in a reserved judgment were—
(1) That large and small liquid gas tanker assemblies and any part of them were not machinery or plant within the meaning of the Act, and were not vehicles.
(2) A hydrogen trailer was machinery or plant. (Expenditure on providing hydrogen trailers and gas cylinders was eligible for approval for grants, he ruled.) A declaration was granted to the company that the Board of Trade was not entitled to decline to make a grant tpwards bulk captial expenditure on metal cylinders on the sole ground that each cylinder cost less than 425.
Referring to hydrogen trailers, Mr. Justice Buckley said that a distinction must be drawn between the large tanker assembly and a hydrogen trailer assembly. In large tanker assemblies, component parts were never separated in use. The trailer was only severed from the tractor occasionally for maintenance, parking or transferring a tractor from one trailer to another.
However, the hydrogen trailer was commonly divorced from its tractor at the customer's place of business. Accordingly, the large tanker assembly could not be plant or machinery under the Act. The hydrogen trailer was in a different position and was a distinct piece of equipment capable of being used separately from the tractor which moved it. When separated from any tractor, it was completely immovable. It was realistic to describe the trailer as a load which was moved by and on its own tractor. Although it has some of the characteristics of a vehicle, it could not be appropriately described as a vehicle.
Dealing with the declaration, the judge said he could well understand that on administrative grounds the Board might consider it unreasonable that it should be required to entertain applications for grants in respect of small expenditures. However, in the present case the expenditure was not small because the cylinders were bought in bulk.
To refuse to consider an application for approval for a grant in respect of a bulk purchase of a large number of items individually costing less than 425, solely on the ground of the low individual cost, was not an exercise of discretion but an abrogation of it.
Every genuine and reasonable application had to be considered on its merits. Low individual costs could not be so weighty and conclusive a consideration as to make all other considerations irrelevant.
During submissions of costs, Mr. J. A. Brightman QC, said that expenditure on cylinders over a three-year period was about £4m. Expenditure on tankers was about £1,800,000, and on hydrogen trailers about 4500,000. The company, he said, had substantially succeeded.
The Board of Trade was ordered to pay the company's costs.
Scottish LDOY dates
• Dates for LDOY eliminating rounds have now been fixed for. June 9, Edinburgh. at Gorgie Market; June 16, Glasgow, at India Tyres, Inchinnan; June,23, Grimsby, at Great
Coates Works.