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FIRST ELECTRIC CAB FINALLY GETS THE GREEN LIGHT IN MINEHEAD DESPITE RED TAPE


West Somerset finally has its first all-electric hackney cab after a two-year fight by Alcombe Taxis owner Keith Griffiths to overcome what he called ‘a mountain of red tape.’ According to the Free Press, this is third time lucky for Mr Griffiths, who had his first application turned down by the former West Somerset District Council’s Licensing Commit- tee in 2018. A taxi driver in the town for over 25 years, he bought his £35,000 Nissan Leaf electric car in 2018 to offer customers eco-friendly transport but was told the district council’s rules made no provision for licensing electric vehicles. For the past two years he has only been allowed to use the car for private hire work while he pressed the council to sort out what he claimed was a ‘confused jumble of conflicting rules’. Mr Griffiths made another bid for a hackney cab licence for his car to the newly-formed Somerset West and Taunton Council the following year but was again refused. This time he had applied to take over a licence handed back by a retiring hackney carriage owner but was told that under current rules, only cars, not licence plates could be transferred.


“I have been stuck with a vehicle I can’t use as a hackney carriage while the Government is spending millions encouraging the use of EVs and the local council actively pro- motes the message of being green and sustainable,” he said. Mr Griffiths finally received his electric hackney cab licence in December by agreeing to go through ‘an absolutely crazy process’ which involved buying the retiring cabbie’s car - transferring the hackney licence plate to his own car - and giving the car back to its owner. “Have you ever heard such nonsense?” Mr Griffiths said. “But that was the only way I was going to get a hackney licence for the Nissan. Over the past two years every possible obstruction has been put in my way but I refused to give up because I knew that electric cars are the future. “I kept being told by the district council that it was following government guidelines but those guidelines were from 2010. We are now in 2020 and government guidelines are to encour- age EVs. The district council rules need to be changed.” Mr Griffiths added: “I would like to pay tribute to the Free Press, which has highlighted what I have been going through since 2018. It brought the matter to the public’s attention and undoubtedly speeded up the process. He was backed by Minehead Mayor, Cllr Paul Bolton. also a district councillor, who said: “The amount of time this has gone on is ridiculous. The district council was asked a long time ago to review the taxi policy so that we could look at allowing electric taxis to be licensed, and to this day it hasn’t been done. It’s a crazy situation. He added: “Keith is just trying to do the right thing and pro- vide the town with a clean mode of transport, and has been hitting his head against a brick wall. The town council has supported Keith in everything he has tried to do to give peo- ple a choice of a green alternative for a taxi in Minehead.” Local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said he was ‘relieved and delighted’ that consent for the use of the electric taxi had finally been given. “But I think it is utterly ludicrous for a local authority to have taken quite so long to see sense,” he said. “Quite honestly, for a council to put some outdated, petti- fogging set of regulations in the way of an individual who wants to make a genuine, personal contribution to the fight against climate change is utterly pathetic.”


62 JANUARY 2021


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