[2025] UKUT 106 (AAC)

In our assessment, Mr Rafiq’s email dated 12 June 2024 made a valid request on behalf of the operator to be given a period of grace. This request was set out at the end of Mr Rafiq’s email dated 12 June 2024. While Mr Rafiq had not set out the specific time period he was requesting, we are satisfied the OTC understood it to be a request for a period of grace. See, for example, the description the OTC has given it in the index to the bundle on page 12 which describes Mr Rafiq’s email as: “..requesting a Period of Grace”.

The Traffic Commissioner has never dealt with the operator’s request for a period of grace. It is not mentioned in Ms Reilly’s email dated 12 June 2024, apart from the general sentence that the contents of Mr Rafiq’s email were noted. In circumstances where the Appellant(through Mr Rafiq) had made a valid request for a period of grace, we are satisfied it was procedurally unfair for the Traffic Commissioner to fail to make a decision about whether or not to grant one.

We do not consider this was a situation where a request for a period of grace was bound to fail. In reaching this conclusion, we note, and take into account, that Ms Reilly’s email dated 12 June 2024 only requested limited information, specifically details of which agencies had been contacted and which job sites were being used. None of her questions dealt with the request for a period of grace. Nor did the email indicate that the other information Mr Rafiq had provided in his email dated 12 June 2024 was inadequate or incomplete.

While there is no right of appeal against a Traffic Commissioner’s decision (or lack of decision) in respect of granting a period of grace, we are satisfied that the Traffic Commissioner’s failure to address the request for one amounted to procedural irregularity.

Further and separately, we are satisfied that in circumstances where the outcome of the decision-making process was for the Traffic Commissioner to make a direction revoking the operator’s licence, it was also procedurally irregular for the Traffic Commissioner, acting through the OTC, to:

For the reasons set out above, we are satisfied the Traffic Commissioner’s revocation direction involved procedural irregularity capable of making a material difference to the outcome or the fairness of the decision-making process. We are therefore satisfied the revocation direction involved one or more errors of law.