Sussex wrote:
Similar to the trading of a plate, without the old proprietor saying so a council can't transfer the license, or add anyone else to it.
Not sure the plate analogy is the best one.
As far as I can make out, in the Sheffield case the licensee would have remained the same, ie Uber Britannia Limited (in a plate transfer scenario the licensee would change).
Of course, the people employed by the licensee can change, but that doesn't mean the licensee will change - it's still Uber Britannia Limited. A company is a legal entity distinct from the directors working for it, who can come and go without affecting the status of the company, and thus without affecting its status as the licensee.
I suspect that normally if the directors changed then an operator's licence would continue to be valid, and the council would just need to be informed of the change of directors, and obviously the new directors would have to be fit and proper etc.
Not sure if in this case Jo Betram would really need to be involved. The change of the company's directors is more the domain of company law rather than licensing.
There has to be a named person on the operators license normally that would be the person who is company secretary,you cannot transfer a private hire operators license,it would have to be a fresh application.
At a rough guess I suspect that it's all basically an administrative cock up - Uber failed to change the company's directors when Jo Bertram left, as required by company law. And/or they failed to inform Sheffield City Council of the change of directors, hence the current scenario.
If the correct procedures had been followed then there wouldn't have been a problem.
And while it's not entirely clear from what's reported, it may have been that Jo Bertram was the company's only director, which of course increases the possibility that a procedural error will fall foul of both company law and the licensing requirements.