Schedule Unreliable : Licence Lost
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IN allowing an appeal by the British I Transport Commission, the Transport Tribunal in London, on Tuesday, criticized as unreliable a statistical document submitted by the respondent. Mr. T. W. Haines, of 159 Bedminster Road, Bristol, 3.
The Commission appealed against the Western licensing Authority's grant of an A licence to Mr. Haines for two-vehicles mainly to carry scrap metal within a 10-mile radius, and goods from Avonmouth docks.
Mr. G. H. P. Beames, for the Commission, said Mr. Haines came into the industry through the contract-A gate. There was, of course; nothing improper in that, but he had thought, six months after obtaining a second vehicle, to iransfer from contract-A to open A licence: He approached a customer who would otherwise have been satisfied to continue the existing arrangement, To justify the grant of an open A licence to enable the applicant to carry for the customer for whom he was carrying under contract-A licence, there must be a genuine desire by the customer, and not by the applicant.
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Mr. J. R. C. Samuel-Gibbon, for the respondent, said all Mr. flames was seeking was to continue the traffic within a 10-mile radius and to employ spare time in carrying a special type of steel to a Gloucester foundry, and non-ferrous metals to Birmingham. The Gloucester and Birmingham traffic was negligible compared with that carried within the 10-mile :radius. .
Giving the Tribunal's decision, the president, Mr. Hubert Hull, said that unfortunately no one had looked at the document during the hearing before the Licensing Authority. • The Tribunal had frequently suggested that if applicants or objectors were going to rely on a statistical document, they should supply copies to their opponents at least seven days before the hearing. Had the schedule in question been examined at leisure, it would have been seen to be unreliable. It was not suggested that the table was deliberately misleading.
Mr. Haines was granted six weeks to take "what presumably will be his most convenient course—to apply for a new contract-A licence."