Licence in doubt
Page 12
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• Decision has been reserved on whether the successor to a recently-collapsed Birmingham haulage company will get an operator's licence following opposition from the Road Haulage Association and the Transport and General Workers Union.
Walker Bros (Birmingham) Limited, a company formed following the collapse last December of the 42-vehicle Walker Bros (Transport) Limited, is seeking a national licence for eight vehicles. The application first came before West Midland Licensing Authority Ronald Jackson in June when director Malcolm Walker admitted that while he was chairman of the Birmingham Training Group he had borrowed £87,000 without the knowledge of the other partners to prop up Walker Bros (Transport).
This was being repaid at the rate of £3,000 a month by another of his companies, Walker Bros (Nottingham) Limited. Jackson adjourned the proceedings for the financial evidence to be examined by a Government-appointed assessor (CM June 28).
Brand new company When the hearing was resumed Guy McGregor, a financial assessor appointed by the Secretary of State, sat with the Licensing Authority.
Questioned by McGregor, Walker said that hire purchase agreements for the Walker Bros (Birmingham) vehicles had been put in the name of Walker Bros (Nottingham) because the Birmingham company was a brand new company with no trading record.
The Birmingham company was paying the Nottingham company a sum each month identical to the hire purchase payments. The vehicles were treated as belonging to the Birmingham company with a hire purchase debt owed to the Nottingham company. There was no likelihood of the Nottingham company suddenly needing the money. The outstanding PAYE figure of £4,982 was in respect of a threemonth period: one month of that had since been paid. In reply to Michael Carless for the RHA Walker said that in calculating the Birmingham company's profit in its first seven months of trading no account had been taken of the £6,000 paid to the training group by the Birmingham company on behalf of the Nottingham company.
Carless said the Birmingham company's financial position was bound up with the financial position of Walker himself who had committed himself to considerable payments, including £36,000 a year to the training group. He was only receiving £5,000 a year from the Birmingham company and the Nottingham company had not achieved the best of financial results in recent years.
Illegal operation On the question of repute, Walker on his own admission had diverted a large sum of other people's money for his own use when chairman of the training group. The financial evidence of the first seven month's operation indicated a totally illegal operation.
Walker had bought certain vehicles, running them on the road operated by the Birmingham company, effectively paid for by the Birmingham company and driven by the Birmingham company's drivers, when that company had no licence. He must have known that he could not legally use those vehicles under the Nottingham company's licence.
Severe difficulty Dennis Mills for the TGWU said that some 60 of his members had been put in severe financial difficulty over the Christmas period owing to the collapse of the old company. They had been left without finance and it was three or four months before they got any money at all. If the trend was allowed to continue, with companies being allowed to go to the wall and then just starting up again it would make a mockery of the licensing system.
For the company Johanthan Gosling said that nothing had ever been hidden by Walker. The illegal operation amounted to a technical infringement in a complex order of the law.