Gwendoline Joyce Greenwood and David Greenwood (in partnership)

An appellate tribunal may interfere with a Traffic Commissioner’s decision only where, on objective grounds, reason and law require a different view. An application for an operator’s licence may properly be refused where the applicant fails, within a reasonable period, to provide financial evidence showing that the current applicant partnership has sufficient resources to maintain its vehicles in a fit and serviceable condition.

The Tribunal cannot cure that failure by treating an application actually made for a standard licence as one for a restricted licence. Nor can it use the appeal jurisdiction to remedy a Traffic Commissioner’s omission to make a discretionary direction concerning continuation or transfer of a dissolved partnership’s former licence.

The appellant partnership, comprising Mrs Gwendoline Joyce Greenwood and Mr David Greenwood, applied for a standard national operator’s licence for one vehicle after the death of a former partner had dissolved the earlier partnership which held an operator’s licence.

The Traffic Commissioner for the North West of England refused the application because the financial material supplied related to the dissolved former partnership, rather than the applicant partnership. The appellant appealed under Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995, maintaining that correct financial information was delayed and that a restricted licence had been intended.

The central issues were whether the refusal was plainly wrong and whether the Upper Tribunal could provide relief concerning the former partnership’s licence.

1. Appeal dismissed. Applying Bradley Fold Travel Ltd & anor v Secretary of State for Transport [2010] EWCA Civ 695, the Tribunal’s task was to determine objectively whether reason and law compelled a different view from that of the Traffic Commissioner. The refusal was not plainly wrong.

2. The application made was for a standard licence, regardless of Mr Greenwood’s asserted intention to seek a restricted licence. In any event, the financial-resources requirement in section 13D applied to both forms of licence.

3. The applicant failed to provide, by the reasonable deadline or by the date of refusal, financial evidence in the name of either or both current partners. Evidence relating to the former partnership was insufficient because that partnership had dissolved upon the death of a partner. The Traffic Commissioner was therefore reasonably entitled to require current evidence and to refuse the application under section 13(5).

4. As a postscript, the Tribunal noted that Ian Phillips (trading as T and R Phillips Haulage) [2016] UKUT 156 (AAC) showed that the Traffic Commissioner might have had powers under regulations 31(3) and 31(4) to suspend the former licence and treat the new partnership as its holder. Those discretionary powers belonged to the Traffic Commissioner. Section 37 gave no appeal right against an omission to exercise them.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): dismissed the appeal from the Traffic Commissioner for the North West of England’s refusal, dated 6 January 2023, of the operator’s-licence application.
• Traffic Commissioner for the North West of England: refused the application under section 13(5) of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995 because adequate financial evidence for the applicant partnership had not been provided.