NiNi A wins feeder appeal
Page 34
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• An appeal by Wallace Arnold Tours Ltd has been allowed against the decision of the North Western Traffic Commissioners to refuse to grant applications for new licences, variations and a backing. The intention had been that passengers from Lancashire should be taken by feeder service to join tours and that a tour to Cornwall and Dorset should start in Yorkshire and pick up, rather than start, in Manchester.
The Commissioners' grounds for refusal included that the proposed reorganization would effectively extend the catchment area of the Yorkshire operation at a time when the Lancashire market lacked buoyancy.
The appellant had emphasized that its applications were to rationalize operations by using the new motorway to Leeds. Other operators based in Lancashire had comparable arrangements in the other direction. The Commissioners, the appellant maintained, had been mistaken in treating the applications as if they were for completely new services. Refusal could only place the viability, and hence the continuance, of the appellant's operations from Lancashire at risk.
The inspector for the Secretary of State for the Environment noted that a slackening of business in 1972 seemed only a temporary setback. In the inspector's view the proper criterion was whether the system proposed was likely to enable Wallace Arnold to score an unfair advantage over its competitors. Given, however, that the appellant was prepared to limit its carrying capacity to its present equivalent it seemed that the respondent would have no legitmate grievance inasmuch as the appellant would be confined to deploying its existing entitlement by more economical means.
The Environment Secretary accepted his inspector's report and the appeal has been allowed.