Nadeem Iqbal Butt t/a Communitywide Travel Services

A revocation decision under Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981, section 17(3)(e), may properly rest on material changes since the grant of an operator’s licence where those changes were relevant to its grant. Such changes may include the operator’s address and contact details, trading position, use of authorised vehicles and operating centre.

The appellate tribunal must assess the decision on the material before the Traffic Commissioner. The appellant bears the burden of showing that the reasoning or application of law required a different conclusion. A ground intended internally, but not communicated in the decision or incorporated notice, cannot be treated as a basis for revocation on appeal.

The appellant, a sole trader holding a restricted public service vehicle operator’s licence, appealed against the Traffic Commissioner’s revocation of that licence by letter dated 5 August 2022.

The Office of the Traffic Commissioner had received no timely response to requests for renewal information and later identified changes concerning the appellant’s address, business entity, trading, vehicles and operating centres. Internal memoranda referred to both loss of repute and material changes of circumstances. The revocation letter referred only to the earlier notice concerning revocation.

The appellant said that he had moved address, had not traded after a vehicle theft, and wished to resume business as a sole trader. The issue was whether the Traffic Commissioner’s revocation decision should be disturbed.

1. Appeal dismissed. Applying the appellate approach in Bradley Fold Travel Ltd & Anor v Secretary of State for Transport [2010] EWCA Civ 695, the Tribunal considered whether the appellant had shown that the Traffic Commissioner’s reasoning and application of the law required a different conclusion. It was not required to conduct a new first-instance hearing, and could not consider circumstances arising after the decision under appeal.

2. The Tribunal held that the revocation could not be sustained on loss of repute. Although the internal material showed that this had been intended as one of two grounds, neither the revocation letter nor the incorporated notice identified repute as a ground. The Tribunal could not treat an uncommunicated ground as having been properly made part of the decision.

3. The sole effective ground was therefore a material change of circumstances under section 17(3)(e) of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981. The appellant’s changed address and contact details, trading position, use of licensed vehicles and operating-centre arrangements were changes relevant to the grant of the licence. They supplied a proper statutory basis for revocation.

4. The Office of the Traffic Commissioner should have explained why discretion was exercised in favour of revocation. Nevertheless, the appellant had failed to report numerous fundamental changes. On the material available at the time, that failure made the revocation outcome inevitable. No basis was shown for the Tribunal to substitute a different conclusion.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): Dismissed the appeal in [2022] UKUT 352 (AAC).
• Traffic Commissioner for London and the South East: Revoked the appellant’s restricted public service vehicle operator’s licence with effect from 4 August 2022, as notified by letter dated 5 August 2022.