...GMB PERSPECTIVE POLES’ APART ON SAFTEY!
Does your council allow magnetic Licence Plates? Well if it does then is shouldn’t... and that practice must stop immediately.
Why do I raise this matter? Well if you have been reading my previous articles in PHTM you will know that here in sunny Brighton & Hove we have been literally flooded with private hire cars licensed next door by Lewes District Council that work for Uber. Yes I know it’s the same old story all around the country.
The major astonishing issue here is that LDC has allowed these plates to be displayed on vehicles via magnetic format. And this is why we have seen these licence plates/repeater licence plates in the road and stuck on a steel dumpster in the city and as far away as Fratton Train Station.
I do have to make the point that there are many LDC licensed drivers/proprietors who are fully professional and adhere to their respective licensing conditions and it is their colleagues who are letting them down.
A moot point that we currently have with LDC is we consider that any door signage/livery that incorporates the vehicle licence number to be a ‘repeater licence plate’ which must be displayed at all times. This is exactly the same as in Brighton & Hove where the licence number of both hackney carriages and private hire vehicles are ‘repeated’ on the doors.
Additionally the operator of the vehicle has the responsibility to ensure that all plates are displayed as clearly stated in the LDC Operator Guidelines. But when you have a faceless entity that is totally oblivious to the working practices of the drivers that it uses, then local licensing control goes out of the window.
We have put it to Lewes District Council that magnetic licence plates/repeater licence plates are a public safety issue and we have recently been told that this will soon be addressed, which is a good step in the right direction. So it looks like all the magnetic plates will have to be replaced for any of the 600 or so Lewes District Council hackney carriage/private hire fleet that have these in use. This will be a lot of work but well worth the effort.
Any council that allows magnetic plates is acting irresponsi- bly as these can be easily taken off and used for criminal activities and in the worst case scenario put on cars to make them appear to be licensed vehicles.
80
The trade is now going to have to undertake six monthly DBS checks but we need to ensure that any vehicle that displays a licence plate is genuine.
This issue has been made significantly worse since the abuse of cross border hiring because any licensed vehicle can now go and predominantly work hundreds of miles away out of sight and out of reach of respective local enforcement. Con- sequently it is now impossible to tell if such vehicles are genuinely licensed. This is especially relevant where licensing authorities are so out of date that they have failed to mod- ernise and have their Public Register of licensed vehicles online and accessible 24/7/365.
Now I know exactly what some will argue about. I have been told in the past such things along the lines of: “Stickers will ruin the paintwork” and “I use my cab privately as well.”
Unfortunately these excuses do not wash with me at all. If you are a professional licensed cab driver - either with a hackney carriage of private hire vehicle - once that vehicle is licensed it remains licensed during the entire period that it is registered as a licensed vehicle. And after 200k miles I don’t think the paintwork will be much different even without stick- ers. Professional plate mounts can also be used.
In Brighton & Hove we have one-time-only adhesive rear licence plates and door licence repeater plates. At no time can these be removed without being destroyed. In fact when you retire a licensed vehicle you have to remove the sticker which maybe in a dozen or so pieces and hand it over to a licensing officer before you can have a replacement vehicle licensed.
If any licensing authority is reading this that allows magnetic licence plates, then you need to carry out a public safety assessment and rectify this dangerous practice - especially when you know your vehicles are working out-of-sight and out-of-mind of local enforcement.
Andy Peters Secretary GMB Brighton & Hove Taxi Section
andy.peters@
gmbtaxis.org.uk
DECEMBER 2020
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124
