Pamela Hibberd

Where a licence-holder requests an inquiry under Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981, section 17(4), a traffic commissioner must hold it before revoking the licence under section 17(1) or (2). A conditional request is effective where the stated condition is met.

The provision is a procedural-fairness safeguard. It requires only a request, not reasons of a specified quality. A licence-holder may accept that revocation is unavoidable while seeking an inquiry if the commissioner proposes to rely on grounds concerning repute or professional competence. That approach is neither abusive nor outside the statutory scheme.

Pamela Hibberd appealed against the Traffic Commissioner’s decision of 24 March 2022 to revoke her standard international PSV operator’s licence. The Commissioner’s earlier notice identified grounds including material change, good repute and professional competence.

Through her representative, the appellant accepted that revocation might be required because she had traded through a different entity. She requested a public inquiry if the Commissioner proposed to rely on the grounds concerning repute or professional competence. The Commissioner revoked the licence without an inquiry, stating that revocation was made in accordance with the grounds in the earlier notice.

The central issue was whether that conditional request engaged section 17(4) of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981.

1. Appeal allowed. The Traffic Commissioner’s revocation decision was set aside. The appellant had requested an inquiry within section 17(4) of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981, but the Commissioner revoked the licence without first holding one.

2. Section 17(4) is a statutory safeguard of procedural fairness. Revocation is serious, and the scheme requires an inquiry if the licence-holder requests it. The provision imposes no requirement to explain why an inquiry is sought, nor does it permit an assessment of the requester’s motivation before the request takes effect.

3. The representative’s letter was a valid conditional request. Read with the Commissioner’s notice, it requested an inquiry if revocation was to rest on grounds referring to failure of good repute or professional competence. The condition was met. The revocation letter stated that revocation was made in accordance with all the grounds in the notice, not solely on the material-change ground. The Commissioner’s later internal understanding could not displace the terms communicated in the revocation letter.

4. Accepting that a licence must be revoked while requesting an inquiry on particular proposed grounds was not an improper attempt to negotiate the statutory outcome. It was a practical attempt to avoid an unnecessary inquiry while protecting the appellant’s interest in avoiding findings affecting a connected entity’s licence application.

5. Applying the appellate approach in Bradley Fold Travel Ltd & anor v Secretary of State for Transport [2010] EWCA Civ 695, reason and the law impelled a different view from that taken by the Commissioner. The Commissioner therefore acted beyond the statutory power to revoke without an inquiry. The Tribunal left any fresh decision for the Commissioner, within the statutory powers and on current circumstances.

6. The Tribunal did not determine the remaining grounds. It observed hypothetically that one month’s warning would have been reasonable and that the Commissioner had not revoked on undisclosed grounds.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): allowed the appeal and set aside the Traffic Commissioner’s revocation decision: [2022] UKUT 263 (AAC).
• Traffic Commissioner for the East of England Traffic Area: revoked the appellant’s standard international PSV operator’s licence on 24 March 2022 without first holding an inquiry.