The Upper Tribunal made it clear that a TC was entitled to proceed on the basis that a licence applicant was aware of the Senior TC’s statutory guidance when it dismissed an appeal by Oldham-based Anham Hussain, trading as Silver Travel, against the refusal of the Traffic Commissioner for North West England to grant his application for a one-vehicle restricted O-Licence on the grounds that he did not meet the main occupation rule.
The Tribunal said that the directions in the Senior TC’s statutory guidance stated that, historically, TCs have required the submission of bank statements for a three-month period when operators and applicants are seeking to establish availability of finance, but that approach had only given a historic analysis of the operator’s financial position and had been of limited assistance to new applicants who might only be able to establish access to the required finances for a period of one month prior to the establishment of the business.
“Where on application… bank or building society accounts are relied upon, original statements must be supplied for the past 28 days, the last balance of which must not be more than two months from the date of receipt of the application.”*
Applicants might therefore need to submit further statements where their application is delayed or incomplete.
Where applications are made digitally, electronic copies of original documents and internet statements can be uploaded with the application. However, the TCs and staff acting on their behalf reserve the right to request originals.
Also, where copies have been scanned and sent, the TCs and staff acting on their behalf reserve the right to request the original documents to be sent.
The TC used the proportion of Mr Hussain’s anticipated income attributable to the proposed PSV business as a proxy for his main occupation. Anticipated PSV income would, on the information provided by Mr Hussain, provide the majority of his annual income, and so the proposed PSV business would be his main occupation. That did not involve any misdirection in law.
In fact, on those figures, it was difficult to see how the TC could properly have arrived at any other conclusion.
The TC was perfectly entitled take the information provided by Mr Hussain at face value and was not required to suggest how he might rearrange his work to satisfy the main occupation rule nor to speculate as to his likely income profile in the event that he started work as a qualified driving instructor.
In any event, Mr Hussain’s
own suggestion as to how he might rearrange his work would still leave the proposed PSV business as his main source of income: £8,000 per annum from interpreting, £5,000 from handyman work, and £10,800 from the proposed PSV business.
That conclusion makes it strictly unnecessary to consider whether the TC unfairly refused to consider bank account evidence in the form of screenshots.
The Upper Tribunal did not know enough about the screenshots provided by Mr Hussain to assess whether they amounted to the ‘internet statements’ referred to in the Senior TC’s statutory document, but even if they did, that document provided that “the TCs and staff acting on their behalf reserve the right to request originals”.
