DOES A TAXI ASSOCIATION DURHAM COUNTY COUNCIL STOPS THE NEW POLICY AGAIN
Many drivers work from the office or sit on the rank and twist about anything and everything, some when anyone tries to get something changed cry out: “You’re wasting your time nothing changes, never has, never will.”
We all know them, and see them, and unfortunately hear them every day. They also have an opinion on what a taxi and / or private hire association should be doing, no matter how much money that would cost, although they will never get involved with or join that taxi and private hire associa- tion. The last if ever, to join any action, but the first to take advantage of any benefit the association gets for the trade.
Like many of these drivers I didn’t bother with any associa- tion, I also didn’t know of any existing in the county. What I did do was set up a Facebook page in 2014, mainly for me to rant on and help any drivers where I could.
I was contacted and asked to consider becoming a member of a taxi association in 2018. I had publicised their meetings a few times on my page and decided it was time to go to their Annual General Meeting that April, and with a few others became a member. There was no point shouting how the trade needed to come together and not put my money where my mouth is. At the 2019 AGM I was asked to consid- er standing for election as Chair of the Durham Licensed Taxi Association [DLTA] which I did.
Which brings us up to today.
Thankfully Durham County Council [DCC] Joint Administra- tion [JA] decided to put the new Taxi and Private Hire Licensing Policy [policy] out for a ‘new’ consultation.
Now we have a serious question, is this a genuine consulta- tion or just for show? I’ll tell you why we have concerns.
Durham County Council set up the County Wide Working Group [CWWG] about ten years ago, this is their idea of working with the trade. Some issues have been improved, some were still a problem as of December 2019, the last time the council held a meeting.
That meeting had huge significance because at the meeting the Licensing Manager agreed to work with the trade on a new policy, which was due for renewal in April 2021, to make it workable in order to overcome many problems the trade was having fulfilling the council’s duty to ensure service supply is fit and proper to truly protect the public. This was a major change in attitude from licensing towards working with the trade, at least we thought it was.
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Then March 2020 lockdown came, and boy was that used to full advantage; NO MEETINGS of the CWWG were held despite the many modern tools available, such as Zoom and Teams. If I was able to attend a meeting with Government Ministers and others around the country from my front room, it shouldn’t have been beyond the ability of council officers to arrange a meeting between them and taxi and private hire trade representatives. During 2020, the DLTA moved its monthly meetings to Zoom and we didn’t have resources or staff paid for by the trade to facilitate this.
In September 2020, a draft policy was put out for consulta- tion. In November the DLTA held an informative Zoom general meeting in which the Director of the National Private Hire and Taxi Association [NPHTA], Dave Lawrie, was guest speaker.
DLTA and the NPHTA put in a joint response to the consul- tation, as well as individual members of the DLTA putting in their own thoughts, [the ones we could put in writing]. This you would think would have started discussions between the trade and the licensing authority?
NO, in fact despite repeated requests for information, we were eventually told the policy due to start in April 2021 was put back until after the May local elections, to July 2021.
Licensing probably didn’t want it to become an election issue as it would definitely have been raised by someone, no prizes for guessing who.
A new council was formed for the first time in about a hundred years by the JA, but again licensing was deaf to requests for meetings or information on what was happening regarding the draft policy.
Like most members of the trade during Covid, as well as trying to get information and assistance from different council departments, our members were struggling not only to sustain themselves and in some cases their drivers, passen- ger assistants and desk staff, but also get vehicle and driver licences renewed and where needed new vehicles and rarely new drivers licensed.
In September 2021, I was made aware of a General Licensing and Registration Committee Meeting [Licensing Committee] by a news report, [note I had made repeated requests to be informed if the policy was made public or went before a committee for a vote, it had to be published SEVEN DAYS before that meeting]. Again requests for a CWWG meeting were ignored.
APRIL 2022
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