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NEWS...IN THE NEWS... GUILDFORD CAB LICENCE FEE DISPUTE TAKEN TO WESTMINSTER
The secretary of Guild- ford Hackney Asso- ciation has called on the government
to
investigate the amounts charged
for taxi
licences by the bor- ough. In a message to the House of Commons Transport Committee, Mark Rostron wrote that the council has been ‘illegally profiting for years’ from the issuance of both driver and vehicle licences. By law, fees charged by councils for issuing taxi licences should only cover costs and should not be used to pay for other functions within the licensing department. Drivers of both hack- ney cabs and PHVs must purchase a
licence every three years, at a cost of £215. A licence must also be purchased annually for each vehicle, at a cost of £348. However, Mr Rostron has been in dispute with the council over the amounts charged. He claims they do not match the administra- tion costs of
the
department. “What they have done is charged an arbitrary amount of department time to the issuance of taxi licences without a proper calculation of how much should be charged,” he told the Surrey Advertiser. “They have set the licence fees to help subsidise the depart- ment to balance its books.”
According to data from 2011 there are wide discrepancies between the time recorded for issuing each type of licence. Hours recorded range from an hour and 20 minutes to more than four hours. Licensed vehicles are tested twice a year at the council’s Woking Road depot, at a cost of £56. Mr Rostron said that aside from the two vehicle checks all driv- ers get for the cost of the vehicle licence is a piece of paper and a metal plate. He dismissed the council’s claim that there are other costs in terms of time spent issuing licences as ‘hand waving’.
“The point is if they can justify that then fine but what we have got is time records when it appears they are charging hours and hours of time,” he said. The time they are spending issuing vehi- cle licences is just issuing a plate and issuing a licence which just takes half an hour.” He said that there may be another half an hour spent behind the scenes but not to the extent that has been charged. In his email to the House of Commons Transport Committee, Mr Rostron wrote that Guildford was just one example of councils overcharging drivers. “In my view, the data shows that taxi drivers
have been grossly and improperly overcharged for years,” it read. “I hope you instruct the councils to start to make a proper calcu- lation of the true costs of issuance of these licences and that the councils refund the overcharges made over many years.” A spokesman for Guildford Borough Council said: “We have investigated Mr Rostron’s claims and our approach has been audited both internally and by inde- pendent auditors. “There were some rec- ommendations from the audits which we have implemented but overall it showed that our approach for cal- culating licences is
reasonable and in line with the legal require- ments. A further audit is already scheduled this year to ensure that previous recommen- dations are in place to identify any further steps that need to be taken. “We will continue to liaise with Mr Rostron and we are confident that we can resolve the issue to the satis- faction of both of us.” Mmmm… This is where it all kicked off in 2010: the Guildford Audit Report has been used all over the country as the first definitive docu- ment setting out the parameters of charging licensing fees, and now the natives are restless again. See comment page 14 – Ed.
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