CROSS-BORDER HIRING:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND HOW IT IS
Cross-border hiring is a contentious issue with vary- ing views across our industry. We continue our in-depth analysis of this hot topic, written and researched over six years by Mark Jennings and Lee Ward, two very proactive and knowledgeable members of our trade. As there is a vast amount of information to absorb, we have split the article into three parts, the final one will run in next month’s edition of PHTM.
PART 2 THE MEANING OF THE WORD “OPERATE”
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/57/section/80 [The National archives]
This simply means that an operator takes a booking request from a customer, records that booking, and despatches that request to a driver. The operation does not finish until the driver has received the job details, as in the word “for” a private hire car. Simply stopping the operation at the invitation or acceptance stage would mean that an operator has invited and accepted a book- ing, but what does he do then? Without the ability to communicate those job details to a licensed driver it is only two parts of the operation.
The operation of invitation, acceptance for a private hire car cannot be fulfilled until that driver has received the booking details.
Therefore, because one cannot operate in a controlled district without the trinity of licences being in place, none of those licences involved in that operation can be outside of the licensed area.
The requirements in the act are that the operator, driver and vehicle all have to be licensed by the same authority. s.55, s.51 and s.48 simple, isn’t it? or so you’d think.
6 CONFUSION FROM THE DEREGULATION ACT 2015
Since the Deregulation Act 2015 many authorities have blamed the act for the increasing number of cross- border working vehicles, which is in fact an urban myth surrounding this matter.
The Deregulation Act 2015 only modified the 76 Act at s55 by making an addition named s55A where it explains that an operator licensed in one controlled district may accept a booking from another controlled district and can sub-contract the booking to a licensed operator in that controlled district to provide the vehicle.
It was quite clear in the Hansard records that this was to enable a business (the licensed operator) to expand its business into other areas, but this is where the Deregulation Act has fallen foul.
The 76 Act is clearly written to show that an operator licensed in a controlled district can sub-contract a booking to another licensed operator depending on from where the customer is wishing to be collected. If the customer is in the same controlled district then the operator subs the booking to another operator within that district and should the booking be in another controlled district then the operator can now sub- contract the booking to an operator licensed by the other controlled district authority.
Should the Deregulation Act have intended for any booking to be contracted to any other operator regardless of where either operator or booking was located, then the modification to the 76 Act would have simply stated that a booking accepted by an operator licensed under s55 of the 76 Act can sub-con- tract the booking to any other operator licensed under the s55 of the same Act and therefore giving total disregard for where any vehicle was licensed and/or making itself available.
By deliberately modifying the 76 Act in the way that it did, it kept alive s75 (1) (a) of the 76 Act which explains that a vehicle can bring customers or goods into another controlled district, provided that it does not make itself available for hire in the district that it is not
APRIL 2022
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