Tribunal backs LA on established site refusal
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• The Transport Tribunal has backed an LA's refusal to allow Chambers Waste Management to continue to operate from a Guildford site it has used for the past 19 years.
Following an objection from Surrey County Council, South Eastern & Metropolitan LA Brigadier Michael Turner had decided that the depot at Clay Lane, Jacobswell, Guildford was unsafe for the continued operation of 13 vehicles and four trailers.
The council had objected on the grounds that access to the site was dangerous. Having visited the site, the LA had concluded that visibility for an HGV driver entering or leaving the site was less than 50m.
For a driver travelling at 30mph on a wet day those limits were very close to the emergency stopping distance, and Turner had not felt able to permit an operating centre to operate which placed passing drivers in that situation.
For the company, Alice Robinson told the Transport Tribunal that the LA had failed to take account of the history and nature of the site. Although Clay Lane was a busy road the company's daily use of the entrance was low, involving two movements per clay, one out and one in, by 13 vehicles. There had been no accidents in the site's 19 years of operation and this was the first time there had been any objection to its use. The LA had approached the matter entirely on a theoretical basis without regard to the practicalities of the situation.
Dismissing the company's appeal, the tribunal said that the statutory provisions required licence applicants to persuade an LA that an operating centre was suitable for use. Faced with a conflict of evidence concerning visibility at the entrance, the LA had taken the sensible decision to visit the site himself, putting him in the best position to come to a fair conclusion.
It seemed to the Tribunal to be beyond doubt that the LA was justified in arriving at his decision but as the company had since been granted planning permission for an alternative access to the site, the Tribunal directed that its decision should not take effect until the beginning of March.