CROSS BORDER CRISIS
WOLVERHAMPTON COUNCIL HANDS OUT 15,000 TAXI LICENCES IN ONE YEAR TO DRIVERS ACROSS UK
Peter Madeley from the Express and Star has conducted research into the continued issuing of private hire driver licences by Wolver- hampton Council to drivers working en- tirely remotely in other districts. He presents the current stats, and the re- markable break- down of areas where these Wolver- hampton licensed drivers are working:
Wolverhampton Council handed out a record 15,000 pri- vate hire licences last year – raking in nearly £3.7 million in fees.
But only a small fraction of the new licence holders are operating in the city, with some drivers working hundreds of miles away in Scot- land.
Applications from Kilmarnock, Edin- burgh, Perth and Kirkcaldy were received by Wolver- hampton Council last year, as the authority granted 15,171 licences to extend its domi- nance over the British private hire market. The data was pro- vided in a Freedom of Information re- quest. It showed that in 2019 a total of 11,461 applications to Wol- verhampton Council came from drivers based in Birming- ham, while there were 2,457 from Manchester,
1,926 42
plummet. In 2018-19 Birming- ham Council issued 1,768 private hire licences, down 11 per cent on the previous year. It currently has 4,461
drivers li-
Other areas include: Sunderland; Southend; Preston; Nottingham; Birmingham; Llandudno, Wales; Hull; Huddersfield; Carlisle; Blackburn; Bristol; Edinburgh; London; Manchester; Southampton; Sheffield; Torquay; Telford and Shrewsbury.
from Coventry, 1,279 from Leicester, 1,102 from Nottingham and 432 from Telford. In the last five years the city council has received applica- tions from 325 miles away in Perth – a six-hour drive from the city, and 254 miles away in Truro, Cornwall, which takes almost five hours to get to by car. It has granted 35,035 private hire licences since 2017, pumping £8.7m into the authority’s cof- fers. The overall figure for last year was up 25 per cent on 2018, and represented an 18-fold increase on the 833 licences the
authority handed out in 2015. In that year a change in the law allowed private hire drivers to operate in a different area from where they obtained a licence. It prompted licens- ing bosses at Wolverhampton Council to stream- line its application process and slash the prices of licences – leading to a dramatic increase in applications. However,
the
authority’s domi- nance of the market has not gone down well with other councils, some of which have seen their own private hire applications
censed. Meanwhile Walsall Council received just 48 new applica- tions for licences last year, when it had a total of 1,129 private hire drivers registered. The authority’s total income from private hire and hackney carriage licensing was £157,482. Over the same peri- od Wolverhampton Council had 1,018 applications from private hire drivers based in Walsall. A new report to Walsall’s director of public health has outlined concerns over dwindling ap- plication numbers. Councillor Mike Bird, the leader of Walsall Council, said he favoured a change in legislation as the current system was “making a mockery” of local authority licensing laws. “Wolverhampton Council has cor- nered the market, but you have to question whether it is right that a driver can get a licence there but ply their trade hundreds of miles away,” he said. Concerns have also been raised over passenger safety. Lib Dem campaign- er Ian Jenkins said: “The council has turned a vital safety
check into a cash cow. “We need to sup- port the private hire trade in the city and not turn ourselves into a taxi version of Gretna Green. “It just seems like the budget line comes first above everything.” Wolverhampton Council has always defended its posi- tion, stating that it oversees enforce- ment operations all over the country, and that any profits it makes from licens- ing are ploughed back into
the
scheme. Councillor Alan Bol- shaw, the city’s licensing chief, said: “Councillor Bird seems to have come quite late to the party. “There have been several consulta- tions about the private hire trade and he appears to be playing catch up. His contribution to the debate is wel- comed as much as anybody’s.” NPHTA comment: At the risk of repeti- tion, once again this scenario was not
created by the Deregulation Act 2015; it was encour- aged by that Act but was able to unfold and spread because of the various cases that have blown holes in the LGMPA and allowed such “right to roam”. Questions: The vehi- cles these drivers are using should be licensed in Wolver- hampton as well, and tested within the dis- trict (LGMPA section 50(1). However, Wol- verhampton Council insists they’re doing it right, and that all these hundreds of vehicles can get an MoT anywhere in the country. But that’s not taxi compliance testing, and it’s not appropriate to the area (and vehicle licensing require- ments) of the council where they’re actual- ly working. As for the operator licence, look at the break- down of the driver locations: For exam- ple, are the 11,461 Birmingham drivers’ vehicles on the fleet of a Wolverhampton private hire opera- tor? That’s the only way they can oper- ate legally, with all three licences matching. Same applies to
the
remotest examples such as Perth. Surely the existing Wolver- hampton PH oper- ators can only accommodate so many
piggy-back
operator licences from outside Wol- verhampton. What a nightmare!
FEBRUARY 2020
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