Bad Legal Advice Leads to Unlawful Undertakings, Allegations of Fronting and Traffic Commissioner’s Public Inquiry

This Operator, represented by Simon Clarke, had used a Transport Consultant to apply for their Operator’s Licence and in doing so had been advised to accept undertakings which had no grounding in law and severely limited the way in which the operation could be run.  This state of affairs only came to light when our client’s application to increase the number of vehicles on the licence was called in to Public Inquiry.

Because of the nature of the Undertakings agreed by the Transport Consultant, who plainly did not understand their import, the Traffic Commissioner was concerned that our client might be ‘Fronting’ for another operator, who had left the haulage industry without any loss of repute to pursue other business interests. After hearing legal submissions from Simon Clarke and evidence from our client’s Director, the Traffic Commissioner readily agreed that the Operator was not ‘Fronting’ and that the undertakings were both unlawful and unnecessary. The increased authorisation was granted.