[2025] UKUT 073 (AAC)

Some of the Appellant’s grounds of appeal relate to matters which were not the subject of the Traffic Commissioner’s adverse findings. The grounds that do relate to the Commissioner’s reasons for revoking the Appellant’s operator’s licence, refusing to accept his surrender request and making a disqualification order are as follows:

the Appellant’s surrender request was not made in response to the OTC’s letter of 18 July 2023. It was made because the operator no longer owned any vehicles and so no longer needed an operator’s licence;

a roadside encounter on 24 July 2023, which resulted in a fine of £1,000 in respect of four drivers’ hours offences, involved a vehicle (YK17 VMW) that was not owned by the Appellant and a driver whom the Appellant did not employ. Before July 2023, the Appellant “handed over my vehicles, drivers and projects to Daniel Smith (sole trader – new owner of the vehicles)”;

the driver of vehicle YK17 VMW said he had been instructed by the Appellant to pick up the vehicle from Paddock Wood. The Appellant says that he did not have an operating centre at Paddock Wood but Daniel Smith, the new owner of the vehicles, “had a project…in Paddock Wood”;

the Appellant accepts that the failure the renew vehicle excise tax for vehicle YK17 VMW, which was due on 1 May 2023, “may have been an oversight on my part” but, as such, did not justify disqualifying him from holding an operator’s licence;

the reason why the Appellant asked Traffic Examiner Mepsted, on 23 August 2023, to postpone a visit, with police in attendance, was that, when the visit was notified, the Appellant no longer possessed any vehicles and had no operating centre. Around this time, the Appellant discovered that “Daniel Smith had not changed the logbooks”, he contacted Daniel Smith who “agreed to send on the data”;

according to the Commissioner, vehicles YO18 ZWB, YO18 ZWD, NK17 UJD and YK17 VMV were specified on another operator’s licence and recorded as disposed of by the Appellant on 28 August 2023. This was inaccurate: “the vehicles were taken over before this date” and “it seems the person who made this change used 28/08/2023 for all the vehicles when the correct date was in July”. Daniel Smith told the Appellant that he (Smith) would pay the “handful of road fines from July onwards for the vehicles”. It was wrong of the Commissioner to describe a ‘fraud’ on the revenue because all excise duty was “paid and backdated”;

a letter dated 14 November 2023 requesting that the Appellant attend an interview at DVSA offices on 4 December 2023 was sent to what was, by then, a defunct operating centre. The Appellant did not become aware of the DVSA’s request until after the date of the proposed interview. Contrary to the Commissioner’s finding that he ignored police and DVSA attempts to investigate concerns, he never had any contact with the police about the roadside check;

the Traffic Commissioner had no factual evidence to support her ‘allegations’ and “failed to consider that I was not running any vehicles”;

when the Appellant’s vehicles were transferred, they were roadworthy and there was no evidence that the vehicles were unroadworthy before then;

regarding the 2023 immediate prohibition notices in relation to tyres and loose wheel nuts, the Appellant submits “I was not present nor in charge of these vehicles”. The same applies to alleged breach of rules relating to drivers’ hours and tachographs;