

A tribunal has dismissed an appeal by a Manchester operator who had his licence application refused after supplying bank statements that were too small to read.
Sole trader Christopher Dagnall appealed the decision by the Office of the Traffic Commissioner (OTC) on the grounds that he supplied financial evidence to support his application to run two lorries as requested.
Dagnall had already been asked to provide bank statements covering a longer period, but the set he then emailed the OTC was “too small to be legible”.
The OTC also refused the application because the operator had not provided sufficient evidence that the nominated transport manager was qualified.Dagnall appealed, but Judge Hemingway said the tribunal was also unable to read the financial documents:
“The copies are far too small,” he said. “It appears that the OTC has, in sending a copy of its file of papers to the upper tribunal, faithfully reproduced what had been sent to it in the way of financial evidence by the appellant. That being so, we understand why it was unable to attach weight to it in considering whether the financial standing requirement had been met.”
On the issue of the transport manager, Hemingway acknowledged that although it had seen evidence that an acquired rights exemption had been granted, this was “post decision”, which it could not take into account.
“Had the appellant gone about things differently, he might have succeeded in his application,” the tribunal concluded.