[2025] UKUT 274 (LC)

Mr Quyoom was the only witness with first-hand experience of the business. Because of the very limited business records which were made available to the accountancy experts, and their general lack of familiarity with businesses of this nature, the experts’ assessments (especially Mr Parton’s) were based on information provided by Mr Quyoom about how the business operated. We will therefore make some observations about his evidence.

We make every allowance for the fact that when he gave his evidence Mr Quyoom was answering questions in stressful and unfamiliar circumstances, but we found him not to be a cooperative or helpful witness. Many of his answers were impulsive rather than considered and he could be evasive and sometimes combative, with his response to many questions being to ask a question of his own. His frustration at the cessation of his business and the time it had taken to resolve his entitlement to compensation was entirely understandable, but he did little to make our task any easier by the difficulty he had in giving a clear or consistent account of how his business had actually been run.

The account of the business Mr Quyoom gave in oral evidence was essentially that he would buy whatever he thought would sell at a profit and keep it for as long as he needed to extract that profit. That seemed to us likely to be a more accurate description than the relatively sophisticated business model described in his witness statement. For example, his statement described a policy of regularly purchasing new or nearly new vehicles with low mileage and then selling the parts they contained within about seven years, but the proportion of vehicles of that age in 2017 was less than 7%, while 70% were older than 10 years. The estimate he gave in oral evidence of how long it would take to sell parts was different from the information he gave Mr Parton, his forensic accountant. He told us that, as a guide, the parts of an expensive vehicle would be sold over a period of 6 or 7 years and an ordinary vehicle over 3 or 4 years. He told Mr Parton that parts would generally be sold over a 10-year period and his calculations of loss were based on that assumption.

Mr Quyoom was inclined to blame others for any inconsistencies in his evidence or to bolster his account. When shown a photograph taken on a joint inspection with the Environment Agency in July 2019, when the Site was in the control of the Council, he agreed that the vehicles were stored in unstable piles which would have created a risk to anyone trying to move them. He suggested that the yard had not been left in that condition and that he was surprised the Council had not been prosecuted. Yet when he was shown photographs taken in March 2018 and it was suggested they showed exactly the same piles of vehicles, he disputed what seemed to us to be a fair comparison.

We do not doubt Mr Quyoom’s integrity, and we did not think he was trying deliberately to mislead us but we did not have confidence in much of his evidence, and looked for corroboration from other witnesses on important points. Fortunately, as will be seen, broad confirmation on some of the more important points was available. There were many inconsistencies in the evidence which it would be difficult for us to reconcile with confidence, given the passage of time and the limited availability of contemporaneous written material. We will not attempt to do so except where we feel it is necessary.