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issue 251


issue 251 rev lution www.phtm.co.uk


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insuretaxi.com Authorised & regulated by the Financial Services Authority august 2013 The official newspaper of the National Private Hire Association


CAMPAIGNERS FORCE RETHINK ON VOLUNTEER DRIVERS


nearly two


decades of investiga- tion into the use and payment of volunteer drivers, especially by local authorities, a couple of subtle but dramatic


develop-


ments have occurred – in totally different directions, but with equal potential impact. Firstly, the system for reimbursing volunteer drivers has been changed following a legal challenge from Glastonbury taxi firm CJW Taxis, and the man behind the challenge says this is only the beginning. Somerset County Council has provided guidance on a new mileage repayment method; they consulted legal advisers after Chris Wickham from CJW challenged the use of volunteer drivers and the amount of mileage they can claim. This stems from the growing trend of vol- unteer drivers being used on school and Social Services con- tracts in particular, whereby they more than exceed the HMRC threshold on both


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Swinton Taxi Division is a division of Swinton Group Limited, registered in England number 756681, which is connected for the purposes of the Insurance Companies Regulations 1994 to MMA Insurance plc, Gateway Insurance Company Limited and Provident Insurance plc. Registered offi ce: Swinton House, 6 Great Marlborough Street, Manchester M1 5SW. Calls may be recorded and monitored. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.


0800 409 6490


pence per mile and overall mileage driven. Mr Wickham has been petitioning Somerset since 2006, when he became


concerned


that volunteer driver services were essen- tially operating as unlicensed taxi firms, and that over the last ten years in particular, councils have relied more and more on vol- unteer drivers – some of whom drove more than six million miles between them last year alone, and whose pay- ment structure made them vulnerable to action from the taxman. In this respect Mr Wick- ham differentiates be- tween ‘genuine’ volun- teer drivers – the independent person who uses his/her car a couple of times a week to take Mrs Jones to the doctor’s, who he is not against in any way, shape or form – and those who clock up


tens of thousands of miles a year, most often in vehicles that do not undergo the rigorous testing that licensed taxis and PHVs do. Taking this into the scope of the European stage is campaigner Martin Allen of J A Travel Ltd in Mansfield, who informs us that he and his campaigning colleagues had a tele- phone conference last month with the EU – the second of these conferences - on the subject of the use of transport services in the UK under sections 19 and 22 of the Trans- port Act 1985. Discussions have taken place with DG Competi- tion for Transport and the EU, which has con- firmed that there is a clear infringement of EU law, as section 19/22 does not exist anywhere else in the member states. They also con- firmed that a charity or


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not-for-profit company – indeed, any company offering goods and serv- ices in a given market - is a commercial under- taking, no matter what its legal status is, so these organisations will have to comply with access to the profession and all its restrictions and regimes. Currently quite a lot of investigation is going on “behind closed doors”, as it were, and Mr Allen is hoping to travel to Brussels to meet with the powers that be in the EU at the end of September. As we are known to say under these cir- cumstances, watch this space! And this is a space that is indeed worth watching, judg- ing by the hundreds and thousands of phone calls and emails received by the NPHA on the subject of vol- unteer drivers over the past few years.


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