Applicants owning operational bus stations — Second respondent passenger transport executive for area — CPO authorising second respondent purchasing bus station and incorporating in new passenger interchange — Whether necessary statutory powers for acquisition — Whether acquisition for purposes of second respondent’s “business” — Public interest considerations — Application refused
The applicants (“Yorkshire”) owned and occupied an operational bus station in Barnsley. The second respondent was the passenger transport executive (“the executive”) for the area pursuant to the Transport Act 1968. The challenged CPO would authorise the executive to purchase Yorkshire’s bus station and incorporate it as part of a new transport interchange, which was intended to be a central concourse building developed partly on Yorkshire’s land and to include redevelopment of the bus station. At present there were two bus stations which were linked by a pedestrian bridge to the railway station.
Yorkshire challenged the order on a number of grounds, in particular that it was ultra vires. Under section 10, the executive was to provide interchange facilities to enable passengers by one means of transport to continue their journey by another; under subsection 10(1)(xvii) it was empowered to “acquire by agreement … any undertaking if the assets … in that undertaking” were required by the executive for the purposes of its business. Under section 10(3) the minister could authorise it to purchase compulsorily any land which the executive required for the purposes of their business.
Held The application was refused.
1. The court could not accept the argument that an undertaking could only be acquired by agreement and that section 10(3) could only be read subject to that requirement. The effect of compulsorily purchasing the land might well have been to take control of the undertaking; none the less section 10(3) was not excluded because the executive had the power to purchase the land even if the effect was to acquire the undertaking.
2. Further, the court did not accept that the acquisition was not for the purposes of the executive’s business. The inspector had said that it was in the public interest for a successful and attractive transport interchange to be provided for Barnsley, but under the 1968 Act the executive was able to make charges for facilities provided by it. It followed that the provision of an interchange could properly be regarded as part of its business.
3. Further, there was nothing wrong in the Secretary of State’s decision that the effect of the CPO would not be one of inhibiting competition between those who provided or sought to provide public passenger transport in the area.
4. The court accepted that the onus was on the executive to show that it had sufficient resources to finance the implementation of the CPO and not on Yorkshire to show otherwise. Although the language of the Secretary of State’s decision could have been made clearer, the court was satisfied that his conclusion could not be faulted on that ground.
William Glover QC and Murziline Parchment (instructed by Oxley & Coward) for the applicant; David Elvin (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for Transport; the second respondent, passenger transport executive, did not appear and was not represented.
