K & K HGV Transport Ltd

A Traffic Commissioner must revoke a standard operator’s licence where the licence-holder no longer satisfies the statutory professional-competence requirement. A period of grace may be available to remedy an apparent breach, but an operator must request it and provide a completed application for a replacement transport manager.

Personal caring responsibilities do not permit the statutory regulatory regime to be relaxed. In the absence of an error of fact or law, the Upper Tribunal will uphold revocation, particularly where the operator neither supplied the missing application nor sought a period of grace before the decision.

The appellant company held a standard goods vehicle operator’s licence. After its transport manager was lost, the Office of the Traffic Commissioner gave it several opportunities to submit a completed nomination for a replacement transport manager or request a period of grace.

No completed application or request was made. On 4 June 2024, the Traffic Commissioner revoked the licence for failure to meet the professional-competence requirement. The company appealed, relying on the effect of revocation upon its director’s ability to care for a close family member receiving compulsory mental-health treatment.

The central issue was whether the revocation involved an error of law or fact.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Traffic Commissioner made no error of fact or law in revoking the standard operator’s licence.

2. Under Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995, section 27(1)(a), revocation is mandatory where it appears that a licence-holder no longer satisfies a section 13A requirement. A corporate operator must designate a suitable transport manager meeting the relevant requirements in Schedule 3.

3. The appellant had been informed of the absence of a designated transport manager. It had also been given repeated opportunities to complete the proposed replacement’s application or request a period of grace under section 27(3A). It did neither before revocation.

4. The director’s family circumstances could not establish an error in the Commissioner’s decision. They had not been raised before the decision and the statutory regulatory regime could not in any event be relaxed so that an operator or its director might attend to caring responsibilities. Applying a lower standard in difficult personal circumstances would conflict with the regime’s overriding road-safety aim.

5. The Upper Tribunal was entitled to proceed in the representative’s absence. He had proper notice, the panel could not wait indefinitely, and he later agreed that the appeal could be decided on the papers.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): dismissed the appeal and upheld the Traffic Commissioner’s decision of 4 June 2024 revoking the standard operator’s licence.
• Traffic Commissioner, London and South East Traffic Area: revoked the licence because the operator no longer met the professional-competence requirement under the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995.