IN THE NEWS
DARLINGTON CABBIES TOLD TO PAINT THEIR TAXIS FERRARI RED
A drive to ensure the safety of taxi passen- gers could see all
licensed hackney
carriages in Darlington forced to sport the exact same shade of red as Royal Mail vans and many classic Ferrari cars.
The move to enforce hackney carriages to be Pantone 485, which is part of a Darling- ton Borough Council review of its taxi policy, follows rising concerns over passen- ger safety and PHVs.
While a meeting of the council’s licensing committee heard the authority had faced legal action from taxi drivers over what ‘red’ was, enforced colour schemes for taxis have proved controversial across the region.
In 2011, Durham City was reduced to grid- lock for two hours as taxi drivers staged a
go slow protest against controversial new rules for the trade, which included the impo- sition of an all-white colour scheme.
Applicants for vehicle licences are subject to a range of council policies including a requirement in Darlington that a hackney
carriage must be red in colour and a private hire may be any colour but red.
The authority’s licensing manager Colin Dobson said the council worked with police in covert operations to tackle rogue taxi drivers flouting rules over picking up pas- sengers and had recently taken one offender to court.
However, another legal action had seen the council taken to court after claiming a hack- ney carriage was not red, when the vehicle’s log book stated it was.
Mr Dobson said: “Although vehicles may be classed as red on the log books, if you look round Darlington you will see there are lots of shades of red. Some of them are very difficult to distinguish if they are burgundy or brown.”
BALL OF CONFUSION
In the Summer of 2011, the Law Commission undertook a complex report on the two tier system of taxis and private hire services. Over 3,000 responses were garnered from a wide array of stakeholders and the final report and draft bill was published on the 23rd May 2014.
In April 2018, the IoL published a document “Guidance on Determining the ability of Applicants and Licensees in the hackney carriage and private hire trades”. This is a contentious document that some licensing authorities have accepted.
The former minister for transport Sir John Hayes set up a working group to consider how PHV and taxi licensing authorities use their powers? This was called the Task and Finish Group on taxi and private hire vehicle licensing. Their report was published on the 24 September 2018.
In February 2019 the government published its response to the Task and Finish Report.
We now find ourselves nine years later read- ing yet another report, Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicles Standards July 2020. How many more reports do we have to read before our industry finally receives proper recognition?
James Button, IoL president remarked and I quote: “The long-awaited guidance issued under section 177 of the Policing and Crime
40
Act 2017 has finally been published by the DfT. It is now referred to as the Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicles Standards which is sadly misleading in a number of ways”.
Firstly, these are not statutory requirements and secondly they are not what most licens- ing professionals would regards as standards. They do not address the require- ments for drivers, vehicles or operators in any detail, rather they are a broad overview.
One of most frustrating dialogues in this statutory document is yet again stating risks to passengers which can be seen in abuse and exploitation of children and vul- nerable adults. We are then being told by Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary on the 21st July 2020, that we should undergo criminal record checks every six months. It follows historic and serious cases of taxi and PH drivers abusing their position of trust.
How long are we going to have to pay the price for these heinous crimes that were committed by drivers in our trade? For example, the Rotherham child exploitation scandal occurred from the late 1980s until 2010 and the failure of the local authority to act on reports of abuse, although the police and council had known about if for over a decade. Rotherham Council’s Chief Execu- tive, Director of Children’s Services and the PCC for South Yorkshire Police, all handed in their resignations. Of course, we do not hear
about these individuals, do we? It is the good people in our trade who are targeted and labelled with a reputation that we can- not seem to shift?
The main thrust of this detailed document is the safety of the public, which we all know and understand is of paramount impor- tance, certainly when licensing authorities licence a person to drive a hackney carriage or private hire vehicle.
If you have the time or inclination to read through page by page, you will recall the excellent Task and Finish Report, as detailed in previous PHTM editions. You might well remember Donna Short, Director of the NPHTA at the time, sat on the Task and Fin- ish Group, along with others in the industry, in preparing the 34 recommendations.
It would be a disgrace and a complete waste of time to ignore those recommendations, which in my opinion was a brilliantly pre- sented way forward for our industry!
Ian Hall Chairman Southampton Hackney and Private Hire Association Southampton hackney and private hire drivers in our city
www.southamptontaxis.org AUGUST 2020
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