ALL THINGS LICENSING
Article by Mike Smith, Senior Specialist for Licensing and Community Safety at Guildford Borough Council and Vice-Chair of the Institute of Licensing South East Region.
Please note that this article represents my own views which are not presented as the views of the Institute of Licensing or Guildford BC.
A BUSY TIME!
Elections are considerably involved for Local Govern- ment, particularly when a national general election is called, and after what seemed like six months, the six- week election period has come to an end and the country has a new Labour Government after 14 years of the Conservatives. This period has seen ups and downs with the country still recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis.
17 July saw manifesto commitments of economic stability, cutting NHS waiting times, and establishing GB Energy form part of the King’s speech, although despairingly there was no news on potential reform of the taxi and PHV sector in the speech, or in the new Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh’s, press release outlining her five key priorities a week earlier (10 July). These include:
• improving performance on the railways and driving forward rail reform
• improving bus services and growing usage across the country
• transforming infrastructure to work for the whole country, promoting social mobility and tackling regional inequality
• delivering greener transport • better integrating transport networks
In addition, there was no mention in the King’s Speech of other ‘day to day’ transport issues such as fixing potholes or improving our roads, of which Labour made regular comment about while in opposition, and nothing about making roads safer through better driving. There were also no details about moving the petrol/diesel phase-out date back to 2030 which was another electoral pledge and needs clarification for the certainty of the automotive industry.
However, despite an absence of taxi news from the Government, there is still plenty of licensing news to report on.
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COURT OF APPEAL DISCHARGES OPERATOR “PRINCIPAL” DECLARATION MADE IN UBER v SEFTON
Firstly, the Court of Appeal has overturned the earlier judgement from July 2023, which had held that in order to operate lawfully under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, operators had to contract with passengers to provide the journey the subject of the booking.
However, following considerable concern and a
Government consultation on the potential VAT effects of the earlier position, outside of London we are effectively back to where we were with respect to the position of contractual arrangements between operators and passengers.
In the Court of Appeal judgement, Lord Justice Lewison, upheld the appeal, saying:
“The circumstances in which a booking might be made are potentially very varied. The person who makes the booking may do so on behalf of someone else without incurring any contractual liability. Obvious examples are a restaurant arranging a vehicle for a diner who has finished their meal, a carer requesting a booking for a vulnerable person, a hospital arranging for a patient to be collected, a receptionist booking a car for a visiting client and so on. Moreover, a booking may not necessarily specify any journey; or even be made for a journey at all. A vehicle may be booked simply to be on stand-by. It is thus plain (and indeed is now common ground) that the declaration made by the judge is inappropriate. It assumes that the booking is made by “the passenger”, which is not necessarily the case, and it assumes that the contract is one “to provide the journey” which is also not necessarily the case. In addition, the declaration as made stated that the operator was required to contract in order to operate “lawfully”. The implication from this (although not spelled out) is that if the operator did not enter into a contract, it would be committing a criminal offence, even though there is no statutory provision that creates such an offence.
So where does this leave the trade?
As I said earlier, outside of London we are effectively back to where we were with respect to the position of contractual arrangements between operators and passengers. There does not need to be a contract in place between operator and passenger.
AUGUST 2024 PHTM
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