Martin Arthur, Solicitor

T.C. = Traffic Commissioner

V.I. = Vehicle Inspectorate

Recent Public Service Vehicle (PSV) Appeals

Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981

(Last updated 14 March 2003)

Transport Tribunal Appeal 39/2002   Excellent Connections Limited   18 September 2002

Appeal against revocation upon ground that Appellant no longer of good repute.  Complex argument concerning definition of “public service vehicle” and “local services”.  Appellant was entitled to know of the advice given to the Traffic Commissioner and the weight that was likely to be attached to it by him as being advice from the DTLR.  The Traffic Commissioner failed to give reasons for not following the authorities and for adopting an alternative definition.  Traffic Commissioner applied the wrong test when considering Part III of Schedule I of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981 in confusing “booking” vehicles with “arrangements for the bringing together of all the passengers”.  Genuine expressions of intent had been expressed on behalf of the appellant to resolve the legal issues arising out of the operation of the PSV vehicles; general background to the case and legal complexity meant that the decision that the Appellant had lost its repute was plainly wrong.

Transport Tribunal Appeal 68/2002   First Western National Buses

Appeal against decision of T.C. for Western Traffic Area when he determined that Operator without reasonable excuse had failed to operate a local service registered under s.6 Transport Act 1985 and had operated a local service in contravention of that section and decided that Operator was liable to pay to the Secretary of State a percentage of the fuel duty rebate paid to the Appellant during the during the 3 months preceding the determination.

Appeal allowed and remitted for consideration by a different T.C.:

1. T.C. failed to address the evidence that was given to the public inquiry concerning realistic attainability of success rates based on the decision of the Court of Appeal in Ribble Motor Services Ltd v Traffic Commissioner for the North Western Traffic Area.
2. The T. C. had rejected all the Appellant’s potential excuses relating to traffic congestion and other circumstances without either expressly rejecting the evidence or stating what more the Operator could have done.
3. The T.C.’s findings about the reliability of the Operator’s bus service were plainly wrong in that the sample was too small from which to extrapolate conclusions: also that there was evidence that it was not safe to reach conclusions about the Operator’s reliability based on the bus monitoring exercises and that the T.C. ignored, or gave insufficient weight to, the Operator’s own evidence from various sources about reliability.  If the T. C. did not accept evidence he should have said so and provided at least some indication of why he had rejected it.