ALL THINGS LICENSING The licensing authority


Finally, turning to the licensing authority itself, clearly the licensing authority in whose area the station is situated remains responsible for enforcing offences which take place in that area, such as plying for hire offences.


However at stations which are private land, the local authority is limited as to what it can do to control illegal or inappropriate parking by licensed vehicles. This remit lays with the land owner.


Vehicles licensed elsewhere can be reported for parking transgressions which should lead to a warning from the licensing authority responsible, however it is only specific offences as identified under the Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Act 2022 which requires one authority to report concerns to another, and for the issuing authority to consider licence sanction upon receipt. Unfortunately, parking infringements do not appear on the list of identified offences.


There is also nothing preventing the licensing authority which licenses the vehicles and drivers coming down and conducting checks on how their licensed trade is operating and issuing advice or sanctions as necessary.


Again this is often difficult due to pressures the local authority has on managing the trade in its own area and will only be solved by changes to enforcement powers and a cross subsidy scheme so that authorities can cover the costs of enforcing against out of area drivers from the issuing authority.


To conclude, as can be seen above, in most cases the responsibility for managing comings and goings at railway premises lies with the rail operators themselves with the licensing authority only really able to enforce against its own drivers and vehicles, or those committing criminal licensing offences, such as plying for hire. Naturally this is less than ideal and only really goes to add weight to further calls to update the law.


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However, authorities can play a co-ordinating role between railway companies and drivers, and it very much appears that Elmbridge, as we did in Guildford, has approached both the railway company and private hire operator concerned to try and address the issues raised in the article.


This is where IoL membership would be valuable to the drivers in this situation as they would be able to engage with their licensing authority,


and


potentially the operator, in the informal environment of IoL meetings and under the umbrella of shared understanding and partnership. I would again encourage members of the trade to join the Institute of Licensing.


As it’s December I hope the trade has asked Santa for IoL membership, for full details, please visit: www.instituteoflicensing.org.


IoL SUITABILITY GUIDANCE UPDATE


Hot off the press, the Institute of Licensing has published updated guidance


for licensing


authorities when considering the suitability of applicants and licensed holders for taxi and private hire driver, operator and vehicle proprietor licences.


The latest guidance replaces the guidance originally published by the Institute in April 2018. The original guidance was widely used by local authorities and closely followed in the Annex at section 10 of the DfT’s


standards, published in 2020.


The Guidance is intended to assist licensing authorities in considering their own licensing policies on determining the suitability of applicants and licence holders for taxi and private hire licensing. It was well received among such authorities generally, with many updating or reviewing their policies by


incorporating the


guidance in part or in whole, ahead of, or subsequent to the publication of the DfT standards.


DECEMBER 2024 PHTM


Statutory taxi and private hire vehicle


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