Operating centres, advertising and objections

It is the place where the vehicles on the licence are normally kept when they are not in use. Every centre has to be named on the licence, and each one carries its own limit on how many vehicles and trailers may be kept there.

A licence can have more than one centre, but all of them must sit in the traffic area that granted it. Running vehicles from a base in another area means a separate licence from that area’s traffic commissioner — which is why a company operating across the country holds several licences rather than one, and why the combined company view exists at all.

Enough off-street parking for every vehicle authorised there, at the same time, without any of them standing on the road. Access that the vehicles can actually use — a turn that an articulated unit cannot make is a real objection, not a technicality. A surface that will take the weight. And a place where the traffic those vehicles generate is not unreasonable for what is around it.

Two things sit outside the licence but decide it in practice: planning permission for the use, and a lease or title that permits it. A traffic commissioner will ask, and a centre you have no right to use is not a centre.

You have to advertise the operating centre in a newspaper circulating in the locality, within the twenty-one days before or after the application is made. Get the wording and the dates right and keep the page — the advertisement is what gives local people the chance to respond, and an application advertised late or in the wrong paper has to be advertised again.

There are situations where an established centre is taken over and Schedule 4 applies instead, which changes what has to be advertised. If a centre is being transferred rather than created, check that before you place an advert.

Two different things arrive by two different routes.

• Objections come from statutory bodies — the police, local authorities, and prescribed trade bodies — and can go to any ground for refusing the licence, including repute and finance.
• Representations come from anybody who owns or occupies land near the centre, and are limited to the effect the vehicles have on the use or enjoyment of that land: noise, vibration, fumes, hours of movement.

A representation is not a veto. A traffic commissioner weighs it, and can grant the licence anyway, grant it with conditions on hours or numbers or routes, cut the number of vehicles allowed at that centre, or refuse it.

Conditions attached to a centre are enforceable undertakings. Restricting movements to daytime hours, keeping vehicles off a particular road, capping the number parked overnight — breaking one is grounds to act against the licence.

Adding a centre, moving to a new one, or raising the number of vehicles kept at an existing one is a variation, and a variation that affects the centre is advertised in the same way. Quietly parking somewhere that is not on the licence is a common and expensive shortcut.

Every operating centre on the register is placed by its postcode, so you can see what is already licensed near a site before you commit to it — browse by area and postcode district, or look up a neighbouring operator to see how many vehicles their centre is authorised for. The official guidance covers the rules in full.