ALL THINGS LICENSING
Article by Mike Smith, Senior Specialist for Licensing and Community Safety at Guildford Borough Council and Vice-Chair of the Institute of Licensing South East Region.
Please note that this article represents my own views which are not presented as the views of the Institute of Licensing or Guildford BC.
BEST PRACTICE GUIDANCE
The much anticipated and long-awaited update to the ‘Best Practice Guidance’ issued to local authorities has been published by the Department for Transport following consultation on the draft between March and June last
year.PHTM readers will recall my article in the June 2022 edition about the draft version of the BPG and the changes from the 2010 version in place at the time.
The DfT has issued best practice guidance on taxi and private hire vehicle licensing since 2006. The guidance is non-statutory (unlike the Statutory Standards published in July 2021) but aims to assist local authorities that have responsibility for the regulation of this sector with their policy and standard setting by laying out what the DfT considers to be best practice.
I have noted previously that it is unsurprising that the differences between the 2010 and 2022 draft versions are stark; and that there are some differences between the consultation draft and the final version, indicating that the DfT has listened to the feedback it received.
Starting with the feedback; the consultation attracted 573 responses, which when considering there are hundreds of licensing authorities, many thousands of drivers, proprietors and operators, used by millions of customers and numerous organisations representing each, that number could have been much higher.
However, as the Government has not responded to the Law Commission Report from 2014 and only committed to bringing three (although we are still waiting for National Standards and Enforcement Powers) of the 34 recommendations from the Task and Finish Group from 2018, potential responders may have been apathetic.
However, of those that responded, the Government confirms that it did consider, and, “where deemed
46 appropriate”, amendments were made to the
Guidance. But this does perhaps beg the question as to why it was not deemed appropriate to consider points raised about the draft relating to out of area working and inconsistency between authorities which could be addressed by comprehensive guidance.
Clearly the consideration of consultation responses to a subject such as taxi licensing, where the regulators, trade and passengers have different and often incompatible views is likely to be a challenging task.
The Guidance itself sets this tone about the balance, it is intended to be considered in conjunction with the Statutory taxi and private hire vehicle standards. Whereas the Statutory Standards specify that: the safety of the public is paramount; the Best Practice Guidance sets out that licensing authorities, as regulators, also have a duty to ensure they carry out their activities in a way that supports the people and businesses they
regulate; setting proportionate
requirements avoiding unnecessary burdens, focusing on how licensing authorities can best use their existing powers to ensure that the licensed trade provides a “safe, inclusive, accessible and attractive service to all passengers they may carry”.
So here we have a contrast between the two sets of guidance: Statutory guidance, which licensing authorities must have regard to, effectively says that the taxi sector is a high-risk environment and regulators must do everything they can to keep the public safe; whereas the non-statutory Best Practice Guidance says that councils have the objective of enabling the trade to provide a safe, accessible, available and affordable range of services.
There then follows a summary of the responses and the Government’s conclusion, and I will explore some of the more noteworthy topics:
ACCESSIBILITY: Inclusive service plans (ISPs)
The consultation draft BPG proposed that all licensing authorities develop and maintain an ISP. Most local authority respondents agreed with this proposal, although noting that the creation of transport plans was the function of a local transport authority, not the licensing authority.
JANUARY 2024 PHTM
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