Yard is too small for artics: DLA
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C. H. S. (UK) Ltd
III South Eastern Deputy LA Arthur Mundy has ruled that the operating centre of C.H.S. (UK) Ltd is unsuitable for semi-trailers, following objections from Ashford Borough Council and local residents. The company holds a licence for 10 vehicles at Victoria Crescent, Ashford, and had applied to add six vehicles and nine trailers.
Evidence was given that C.H.S. had taken over the business of J. R. Jordan & Son, which held an international licence for six vehicles and nine trailers, based at Pound Lane, Smeeth, Ashford. Four vehicles and seven trailers had in fact been taken over and they were used on a contract with Batchelors Foods Ltd. There would always be four trailers at Batchelors factory, interchangeable with three trailers kept at Victoria Crescent at any given time.
However, the company was negotiating for a site in Victoria Road away from any residential property, where it wished to keep the trailers unless they were actually loaded at Victoria Crescent. If the application were refused, the company would have difficulty servicing its bank loan and might have to close down.
The Borough Council argued that Victoria Crescent was unsuitable as an operating centre; it contended that the yard was too small for the turning of vehicles. The council did not object to the use of the site as an operating centre for 10 vehicles. Rigids up to 10 metres long were acceptable but it maintained it was impossible to safely manoeuvre articulated vehicles into and out of the site.
Managing director Cyril Parkinson emphasised that it was possible to turn an artic around in the confines of the yard. Granting the application in respect of one additional vehicle only, after visiting the site, the DLA said he concluded that the operating centre was unsuitable on environmental grounds for the operation of three trailers. He felt that there was insufficient room to permit 10 vehicles and three trailers to be manoeuvred within the site, which meant that it would be inevitable on occasions that vehicles would have to reverse into or out of the operating centre to the danger and environmental prejudice of the residents.
Parkinson, he said, was to be commended for his efforts to overcome the problem he faced: it was a problem directly related to taking over the Jordan vehicles and trailers without the Pound Lane operating centre.
He had considered whether he should grant the variation in respect of three trailers imposing a condition that they should not normally be kept at Victoria Crescent, so that they would be left "floating without an operating centre. However, in the absence of any decision by the Transport Tribunal or the courts, which would enable him to authorise three trailers without any operating centre, he had resisted the temptation.
The DLA said he had been told that three of the Jordan vehicles would be specified on the existing licence, thus taking up the margin, with the result that one of the former Jordan vehicles needed to be added to the licence. He was prepared to grant one additional vehicle to regularise that position.
The DLA made it clear that his decision was without prejudice to a pending application for approval of an operating centre at Batchelors factory for four trailers, or any other application that might be made for the 'site in Victoria Road as an operating centre for three trailers.
He said that he was bound to observe that it was particularly unfortunate that Parkinson went ahead with the acquisition of the Jordan vehicles and trailers without having first established that no problems would arise if the operating centre for those vehicles and trailers was transferred from Pound Lane to Victoria Crescent.