
A tribunal has dismissed an appeal by an East London operator against its licence revocation after it relied on an unauthorised operating centre and failed to have the correct systems in place.
Tawakal Foods lost its licence last year after the traffic commissioner found it was using an operating centre that had not been authorised, which is a criminal offence.
A desk-based assessment of the restricted operator was also carried out and its results were marked unsatisfactory, with a lack of systems, record keeping and inspection routines in place.
In a written decision, the TC was also critical of director Mohamud Hassan’s failure to respond to the assessment within seven days, as well as his misleading claim that it had only just started operating HGVs, when it had been doing so for over a year.
The operator appealed the decision, stating that it had submitted an application to change the operating centre and, as the fee had been collected, it assumed the application had been accepted.
Tawakal Foods said it had also taken steps to introduce compliant checks and the licence revocation would result in redundancies.
In its decision, the appeal tribunal said even if the company had assumed its application had been accepted it did not excuse its failure to confirm such an important matter.
And it added that if the operator had taken steps to improve compliance, it had not done so at the time of the TC’s decision and the tribunal was precluded from taking subsequent developments into account.