VOSA has won a major boost in its battle against illegal cabotage after the Court of Appeal threw out a challenge to its impounding of seven illegally operated trucks. The case was brought by four Belgian and UK-registered companies all with links to the Banham family. Trucks belonging to the firms - Romantiek Transport, Mendlesham Group Car and Commercials, Lotransport and JB Trans - had been seized by VOSA in 2006, after being operated illegally on domestic container transport.
Gary Banham had previously run a UK haulage operation, Scorpion Freight, until its licence was revoked in 2000. Both TC Philip Brown and the Transport Tribunal had previously refused to return the vehicles the tribunal ruled that "the Belgian companies were a device in order to enable Gary Banham to continue operating vehicles in the UK once he had been disqualified from holding an O-licence in this country".
The firms had attempted to argue that simply by having an EC authorisation from Belgium meant that it was exempt from the need to have a UK licence. However, the appeal court ruled that because the firms were not carrying out work on a temporary basis - essential if the work is to count as cabotage - they were within the scope of UK licensing requirements and were therefore being run illegally.
In his ruling, Lord Justice Longmere says: "If the vehicle is not performing cabotage at all, but in truth operating full-time in a Member State (in which, as it happens, its auth-ority to operate has been revoked) and not in its State of purported establishment, it cannot be intended that the activity can continue unlicensed." He added that any other reading of the rules would "border on the absurd". Kevin Rooney, VOSA's customer director, adds: "This extremely important result sends a clear signal to operators of foreign-registered vehicles that firm action will be taken where cabotage rules are abused." No-one from Mendlesham was available to comment.
