In any event they got 15 months, during which they must consider compliance protocol; an independent assurance procedure to review and validate the effectiveness of its systems and policies; notifi- cation to TfL of any material change to its operating model; reporting of breaches, material data losses or infringements of data protection law to TfL, law enforcement and regulatory authorities; transparencies during investigations; evasion of enforcement (they cannot use any software, tool or other mechanism to interfere with or evade any enforcement action); a criminal reporting policy; com- plaints handling, and loads more.
There is more than one licensing authority outside London that is keeping a watchful eye on this situation, to assist in their decision whether or not to license (or relicense) Uber in their district. Watch this space? They certainly will be doing just that.
Now then… we move on to Wolverhampton. What a news-hogger! We have featured the ever-rising profligacy of the issuing of private hire driver, vehicle and operator licences by Wolverhampton City Council for some two years now, but all of a sudden it’s hit the head- lines big style. Why? Mainly because the majority of the licences issued by that council are for drivers, vehicles and operators that work entirely out of the area… in some cases over 250 miles away.
And of course just over a month ago we had the “exposé” in The Times about all this, which gave it prominence that it had not had previously in a national daily newspaper. We touched upon that last month in this column… Sour grapes? Throwing toys out of prams? Maybe… but we’ve been thumping the drum about all this for ages.
The fact remains that, according to DfT statistics, the number of drivers licensed by Wolverhampton increased by more than twice the rate of any other council in England and Wales between 2015 and 2017. The overall number of both taxi and PHV drivers rose 383 per cent in those two years. We’ve already previously mentioned the £2.2million they’ve generated in licensing fees in that period.
Anyway, we have since been accused by more than one source of
Wolverhampton-bashing, not least by a gentleman from whom I took a phone call a few weeks back following our July edition. Back to that in a moment… but in this edition we wanted to address the balance a bit, and show more of both sides of the story. Thus you will see inside this issue a feature devoted entirely to Wolverhampton, and the cur- rent cross-border dilemma, and the council’s approach to the problem, and the trade’s approach to the problem: local drivers say they’re missing out on scads of work, but local operators say they’re quite happy for remote operators to use their offices as a base.
You’ll get the views of a trainer for that council, and how he sees the situation and deals with applicants who pass through his training room. In addition, you’ll read our latest “The Way I See It” column, this time supplied by John Bamber, Wolverhampton Council’s Senior Licensing Compliance Officer for out-of-area operations. There aren’t many other councils that have one of those!
We’ve heard of, and reported about, various demonstrations that did or did not take place in Wolverhampton over the past month. The real build-up was for a go-slow demo to have been held on 28 June, but that was scarpered via a local injunction about transgressing vehicle movements between certain hours… and the licensing department threatening to revoke the licences of those who took part.
However, there was indeed a go-slow drive-through held on 16 July, headed by the West Midlands Private Hire Drivers’ Associ- ation. This was labelled somewhat of a damp squib by the ever-quoted head of the council’s licensing committee, Alan Bolshaw, who believes that “… only central government can change the law to allow local councils to manipulate market forces with in their areas. It is totally wrong to continue to use the people of Wolverhampton as piggy in the middle in this ongoing dispute.”
Continued on page 10
AUGUST 2018
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