Not a Mere Technical Point
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Result of this test case will affect gravel pit operators with C fleets
AST week, at Feitham (Middlesex) magistrates court a case was commenced which, I understand, is destined for determination in the Mouse of Lords. The result is vital to the company concerned—Hall and Ham River Ltd. of Croydon— because, if it loses, it could mean the placing on B licence of many hundreds of vehicles which hitherto have been operated on C licence throughout the country by the company.
This is a test case arranged between the Metropolitan Licensing Authority's office and Hall and Ham River, and round one (as reported last week) has gone to the latter which, after a hearing lasting three hours, was awarded 10 gns. costs.
The question at Feltham was this: Is a B (or an A) licence required when a firm such as Hall and Ham River (which, amongst other things, supplies sand and gravel to building and public works contractors) is carrying rubble, etc., to fill one of its pits. Unless the company fills these exhausted nits and returns the site as near as possible to its original state, local authorities will not allow it to work other pits in the area. But the case is not so simple as this. As the Feltham magistrates were told, the firm " supplying " (if that be the right word) the muck and rubble was so anxious to get it off its hands that it was prepared to pay 8s. 6d. a cubic yard to have it taken away.
As Mr. S. Harper, the gravel company's transport officer, put it—even if building firms refused to Dart with their rubble unless given payment, Hall and Ham River would still have to obtain it to fill up its pits, although he agreed with the prosecution that the operation was in direct competition with licensed hauliers.
The magistrates upheld the argument proffered by counsel Mr. Richard Yorke on behalf of the defence that it had been accepted in the trade for 30 years that a C licence entitled gravel firms to carry their own goods irrespective of any payment which might be made to them.
This is not merely a technical point. It is a matter of economy and convenience to Hall and Ham River—economy in the sense that B licences cost money and have to be renewed every two years; and convenience in the sense that the company's whole transport programme would have to be reshuffled to ensure that