Key points
- DVSA impounded the Iveco skip lorry W3 BYS on 16 February 2026.
- The owner, David Harry Webb, applied to get it back. The deputy traffic commissioner refused.
- “Carrying an empty skip counts as carrying goods,” the decision says.
- The son had held an operator’s licence for a scrap metal business. It was revoked in 2024.
The decision was made on the papers by Deputy Traffic Commissioner Giles Pengelly for the West of England traffic area.
Followed from the A38
On 16 February 2026, DVSA officers saw the lorry on the A38 near Tewkesbury carrying an empty skip. They followed it to a third-party business, where the son used a forklift to tip scrap metal and swarf into a skip in the car park.
The son told officers the lorry belonged to his father and that he was on a “private journey”. DVSA found that:
- the lorry had covered about 2,624 km between 19 January and 16 February 2026,
- the tachograph was locked to Severn Metals, a business whose operator’s licence the son had held until it was revoked from 5 March 2024,
- in March 2025, the same lorry, under a previous registration, failed to stop for DVSA while the son was driving,
- there were records of waste transfers linked to the lorry in late 2025 and early 2026.
The father said he had bought the lorry in April 2025 from a man in Cheltenham. DVSA could not trace the seller.
Why an empty skip is “goods”
Under the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995, an operator’s licence is needed to carry goods for hire or reward or in connection with a business. The owner’s case was that no goods were being carried.
The deputy commissioner disagreed: “Unfortunately for the applicant, carrying an empty skip counts as carrying goods.” He found that the lorry was used for the son’s business without a licence.
He also did not accept that the father did not know. “I cannot readily understand what personal use, not connected with a business, the applicant or his son had for that lorry,” he wrote. He found that the father had wilfully or recklessly avoided asking his son what the lorry was used for.
No room for discretion
Under the Goods Vehicles (Enforcement Powers) Regulations 2001, an owner can only get an impounded vehicle back on four specific grounds, for example that the vehicle was not being used illegally or that the owner did not know about the illegal use. There is no general discretion or proportionality test.
The deputy commissioner acknowledged the financial loss, and said he reached the decision “with considerable reluctance”. But with no ground proven, he had no power to return the lorry.
What operators should know
The case is a reminder that:
- empty skips, containers and pallets can count as goods,
- owners who lend a lorry to someone without a licence risk losing it,
- a revoked operator cannot simply keep working with a vehicle registered to a relative.
Commissioners have taken a similar line in other cases, including one where a licence was lent to another firm.
