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140 
LICENSING CASEBOOK
Page 46
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BY NORMAN H. TILSLEY
L.A. Invites Northern Operators to Object to N.W. Applications
'T'HE June 10 issue of the Northern area "As and Ds" carries two notices referring to A. T. Booth (Manchester) Ltd., whose name has appeared so often in recent months in the transport Press. hi the "Applications Not Granted" section the Northern Licensing Authority, Mr. J. A, T. Hanlon, has (after causing the company to wait two months for a decision) without any explanation refused Booth's application for a Northern A licence to operate two long-length articulated vehicles from its Middlesbrough base to carry steel and allied products for existing customers. Booth had made the application in order to regularize its licence position.
The company's application was lodged last December and the blunt refusal, six months later, is not the end of the matter. An appeal has been lodged, the grounds for which will be communicated to the Transport Tribunal, I understand, as soon as Mr. Hanlon gives his reasons in writing for his refusal, as he is bound to do under the provisions of section 174(6) of the 1960 Act, if requested. (A formal request has been made.) Mr. Hanlon's refusal, without his customary Verbal or written explanation, ' is unfortunate, bearing in mind the Tribunals and inquiries Act and the Franks Committee report, which indicated, briefly, that it is morally, if not legally, wrong for a refusal decision to be given without reasons.
In the very same issue of the Northern " As and Ds ", but this time under the "A Variations" section in Part I, appears an application made by A. T. Booth (Manchester) Ltd. to the North Western Licensing Authority, in whose area • the company holds an A licence under which two vehicles are operated—with the knowledge of the North Western Authority and the approval of the Tribunal—from a base at Middlesbrough, in the Northern area.
By this application, Booth seeks to substitute two standard-length semi-trailers with long-length semis. The application, as published in the North, is identical to an application published in the North Western "As and Ds" dated June 5—five days earlier—but with the addition of details of the user attached to the existing licence, and with a long notice inviting Northern area-based operators to send objections to the clerk to the Licensing Authority of the North Western traffic area.
This " repeat " publication of a North Western application five days later in the Northern "As and Ds" raises an important question of principle, for section 173(2) of the 1960 Act lays down that a Licensing Authority "shall publish in the prescribed matter notice of an application . . . specifying the time within which, and the manner in which, objections may be made to the grant of the application ".
The North Western Authority, in his notes in "As and Ds ", has laid down that objections must be received by him n2R " not later than 14 days after notice of the application has appeared in this publication ". The objection period had only nine days to run when Mr. Hanlon duplicated the application in his Area, and therefore any objections received from Northern operators after those nine days had elapsed must be invalid. This must be so, otherwise it has the effect of extending—in this case by five days—the statutory objection period.
Objections have, in fact, been received from British Railways, and from two Northern-based operators, Siddle C. Cook Ltd. and Sunter Brothers Ltd. Cook's
objection was dated June 5 and Sunter's June 9—both dated before the application was published in the Northern "As and Ds ".
To my knowledge the Cook and Sunter companies are not members of the Road Haulage Association, and therefore it must be assumed that the practice of notifying members of applications made in "As and Ds" which may affect them has not been extended to these two companies by the R.H.A. It may well be that both regularly receive copies of the North Western publication. How else could they have found out about the application since they are based in the Northern area?
Be that as it may, both sides are apparently grouping up for a battle, but the battlefield has shifted from Durham to Manchester—and all this is over the substitution of two trailers which involves an uplift in unladen weight of a mere 31 tons!