UNHAPPY NEW YEAR!! VALE ROYAL... VALUE OR VALEDICTION?
So Cheshire got to be Cheshire West and Chester (CWAC) and the new council grabbed Vale Royal and Ellesmere Port to join with Chester and make a new beginning…
..got to be good, don’t you think? Eh!? So let’s have a quick look at the financial footprint….. In 1999 all three areas’ fares were within 10p of each other but over the next ten years Chester went full steam ahead while the others stayed well behind. Perhaps that was because Chester had an all WAV fleet?.......but so did Ellesmere Port!!! Ah!!! but EP had a regulated and capped fleet number didn’t they??? YES!!!!! So that’s all right then. Chester, shopping centre of the North West, and Ellesmere Port controlled numbers and were still earning a liv- ing and the new council boosted their taxi fares by 70p for every two mile job. So along came Vale Royal…….they got a 20p lift on fares in 2011 but they were sort of a full pound behind the others…mmmmm. And then out of the clear blue sky in 2012 they leaped a full quid in one hit to never seen before levels….mmmmm, wonder why??? Wonder what the public thought!!!!??????? Well I could not think why, at the time, but this month’s news tells it all…Vale Royal hackneys have until April 2014 to go all WAV fleet, OH!!! and those vehicles are then limited to a maximum ten years old!!!! Well, that’s all right then isn’t it!!!! Well no, it seems like the taxi trade is not at all amused by these proposals, Oh and neither is the private hire side because they appear to have been hit with the ten year off rule as well and they have also got one year to do it all as well.
So the whole of CWAC taxi fleet will be WAVS…… which is not what the DfT have suggested or indeed what the European Ministers have said. What is on the table at this moment is MIXED FLEETS because that is what the elderly and disabled not in wheelchairs want - they hate WAV’s. I won- der if they have been fully consulted??
Well perhaps 100 per cent works in Chester and E Port? Perhaps the new council is working on numbers of WAV’s per wheelchair users population but Vale Royal already has a just under 25 per cent WAV fleet and that has clearly been supplied by the trade by public demand not councillors wish- es so the new year is going to be a moment of high effort from the trade and the public if this is not going to be yet another rural area that gets it wrong and destroys its hackney fleet.
I wonder if the council has read section 8 and 10 of the DfT best practice guide as set out below following the table.
Chester
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
£2.90 £2.90 £2.90 £3.30 £3.60 £4.00 £4.00 £4.40 £4.50 £4.70 £5.30 £5.30 £5.50 £5.50
Ellesmere Port £3.00 £3.00 £3.00 £3.10 £3.31 £3.80 £3.80 £4.20 £4.20 £4.50 £4.50 £4.50 £5.20 £5.20
KEY TO COLOURS RED TEXT
Up to or over the average for the North Below the average for the North 100 per cent Wheelchair Accessible Area Numbers of taxis restricted
PAGE 34 Vale
Royal £2.90 £2.90 £3.20 £3.20 £3.20 £3.50 £3.50 £3.50 £3.50 £4.05 £4.05 £4.05 £4.25 £5.25
THE ROLE OF LICENSING: POLICY JUSTIFICATION 8.
The aim of local authority licensing of the taxi and PHV trades is to protect the public. Local licensing authorities will also be aware that the public should have reasonable access to taxi and PHV services, because of the part they play in local transport provision. Licensing requirements which are unduly stringent will tend unreasonably to restrict the supply of taxi and PHV services, by putting up the cost of operation or otherwise restricting entry to the trade. Local licensing authorities should recognise that too restrictive an approach can work against the public interest - and can, indeed, have safety implications.
10.
Local licensing authorities will, therefore, want to be sure that each of their various licensing requirements is in proportion to the risk it aims to address; or, to put it another way, whether the cost of a requirement in terms of its effect on the availability of transport to the public is at least matched by the benefit to the public, for example through increased safety. This is not to propose that a detailed, quantitative, cost-benefit assessment should be made in each case; but it is to urge local licensing authorities to look carefully at the costs - financial or oth- erwise - imposed by each of their licensing policies. It is suggested they should ask themselves whether those costs are really commensurate with the benefits a policy is meant to achieve.
WINSFORD CABBIES HACKNEYED OFF WITH COUNCIL PLANS
On a similar theme, changes to hackney carriage licensing will drive Winsford cabbies out of business and leave vulnerable resi- dents without trans- port - according to enraged taxi drivers. Cheshire West and Chester
Council
(CWAC) are recom- mending only WAVs less than ten years old will be licensed as hackney
carriages
across the Vale Royal Zone. Cabbies have 12 months from April 2013 for compliance with the regulation. Winsford Taxi Drivers’ Association (WTDA) argue that doing away with a mixed fleet removes choice for the elderly and semi- ambulant, for whom getting in and out of a WAV can be like ‘climb- ing in and out of a van’. WTDA vice chair, David Steele, said rising cost of living and fuel meant drivers would also not be able to afford pay- ments on the cheapest £26,500
council- approved WAV, forcing
at least 37 Winsford cabbies out of busi- ness. The 40-year-old father of two told the Wins- ford Guardian: “My average takings are £40 per day. Out of that I take fuel and liv- ing. I’m on working tax credits like the majori- ty of drivers. Now the council is asking us to buy vehicles that work out about £600 each month in payments.” CWAC’s
report
acknowledges there will be ‘financial impli- cations to the hackney carriage trade’. From his 11 years in the business, Dave Edwards, 41, has seen how many elderly peo- ple struggle to get in and out of WAVs. Dave said: “If you take away the cars, you take away the choice of those semi-ambu- lant people who can’t use wheelchair vehi- cles because it can be like climbing in and out of a van. “The council will point to PHVs, but if you’ve got an old person who
has done their shop- ping in town and they can’t get hold of a pri- vate hire company, then they’re stuck. It shouldn’t be one size fits all.” Dave points to a Guild- ford Council scheme to do away with a mixed fleet, which was delayed after falling foul of Government guidelines that state councils should be ‘particularly cautious’ about limiting vehicle types. A CWAC spokesman said their decision had been taken after con- sultation with cabbies and the public. They point
to Chester,
Ellesmere Port and Neston, where cabs are currently all WAVs. The spokesman said: “Anyone who does not agree with this policy or wishes to propose an amendment to it, or the time scale, will have the opportunity to address councillors, or have their com- ments brought to the attention of a future Licensing Committee.”
PHTM JANUARY 2013
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