Tribunal worries about fair penalty
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THE difficulty of imposing a fair penalty on an operator with one or two vehicles was referred to by the Transport Tribunal when it allowed an appeal by C. F. Layton against a decision by the West Midland Licensing Authority to curtail its two-vehicle licence by one vehicle.
The appellant's two vehicles were employed separately, one on a coal merchant's business, the other on a furniture removals business. The West Midland LA began proceedings
on hearing that, while records were kept, they did not appear to be consistent with the condition of the vehicles and that one of the vehicles had received two immediate GV9s last year.
The Tribunal points out in its written decision, that neither the LA nor the appellant seemed to have noticed that one of these prohibitions was a delayed GV9, not an immediate one. The Tribunal says that the effect of the LA's decision was unduly harsh, and it ruled instead the one vehicle should be curtailed from the licence for a period of six months or the duration of the licence, whichever was the shorter. This provision was made because neither the Tribunal nor the operator was able to discover how long the licence had to run.
In making its decision the Tribunal said : "When dealing with an operator who has one
or two vehicles on his licence it is sometimes difficult to arrive at a penalty which will not be unduly severe having regard to the circumstances of the operator, because if there is a curtailment at all it cannot be for less than one vehicle and curtailing a man with one or two vehicles by one is a ' much more serious matter than curtailing a man who has got a number of vehicles."