A view from the trade by B. M. Roland National Private Hire Association 0161 280 2800
www.npha.org.uk npha@btconnect.com
Opinion
THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS?... WASN’T?
I
t’s many a long year since I started doing the Review of the Year. Some years I got quite excited, but this year has been one of those periods which never got switched on. You know: you put the plug in the socket, but never actually press the switch.
We started in January 2013 with a load of Scottish rubbish about unmet demand surveys in Scotland, because the suggestion was that they were going to limit the number of private hire cars up there as well as taxis. I did wonder at the time whether there was any logic in having to do multi- ple surveys for both taxi and private hire, especially in these days of richness and wealth at both trade and council level. Still – never mind, nothing seems to have happened there.
February crept in with the DOE in Northern Ireland suggesting a penalty point system for operators doing naughty things, like failing to keep records. Do you remember that? I’m sure I didn’t... when I looked back through this year’s editions of PHTM and saw this, I thought – Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it?.... I don’t think anybody put the plug in that one, let alone switched it on.
In March we got the result of the Southampton in-car camera and sound recording case. Southampton Council lost, on the grounds of 100 per cent sound recording at all times havin been objected to by the Informa- tion Commissioner, but I don’t think they have progressed matters since then. But that made Oxford take a step backward and hold off bringing in a similar mandate in their district.
And of course when I got to last month’s issue – this December – we have Mr Fuller’s Private Member’s Bill before the House for mandatory CCTV in all licensed vehicles. Once again, the plug is in – but will anybody ever switch it on?
April is the time when I review fares and fees. I hit the fares then, and did a long article about councils setting daft tariffs that couldn’t be seen or shown on the meter. That doesn’t seem to have changed things a lot; it has with one or two councils, I’m pleased to say, but this financial year has been significantly different in tariffs from all previous years. We normally have some 200 changes in tariff structures each year, but as I write this Opinion we have only had 76 changes during the whole of 2013. Two of those were fare reductions, and this month (can’t think why), Scottish Bor- ders changed the date on their tariff sheet...but didn’t amend the fares. Oh well, I suppose that was a good idea, wasn’t it?
So with respect to fares, the trade seems to have run out of plugs to put in. Or in reality, times are so hard that they don’t want to risk putting them in.
That can’t be said of fees, which I raised in March and June and July. The Westminster –v- Hemmings case lit blue touch papers all over the coun- try for the trade to re-ignite their long-existing fury at the unexplained rises in fees every year. I won’t go into too much detail now, because court cases are still in the offing; auditors are still looking at numerous councils, and I wouldn’t want to upset matters. I merely have to say that unless your council can show that they have actually calculated the amount they charge you for your licensing fees, they could be in trouble as well.
Yes indeed, there are quite a few councils that have had to pay out a lot of unlawfully charged fees.
The next item which cropped up in March and August, and which raised its head as the CRB became the Double Barrelled Shotgun - sorry, the DBS - was that the courts found that regardless of whether the Rehabilita- tion of Offenders Act 1974 applied or not, a council could not lawfully smack somebody around the head in refusing them a licence, or the right to undertake a job, if they had a conviction which was ancient, limp, and did not suggest that the person involved was some sort of serious crimi- nal. Thank you, Mr T.
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JANUARY 2014
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