FACT v FICTION: INDUSTRY Continued from page 41
“Provided that a district council shall not under the provi- sions of this subsection require a proprietor to present the same hackney carriage or private hire vehicle for inspection and testing on more than three separate occasions during any one period of twelve months.” You’ll note that it doesn’t say “calendar year” but “any one period of twelve months”.
You’ll note also that the same subsection specifies that this testing must take place “within the area of the council”; that’s another bugbear of ours as more and more councils are contracting out vehicle testing, sometimes to facilities that are well outside the district. That also is a no-no… but that’s another day’s soap box.
F ICTION F ACT
Literally hundreds of taxi licence holders have complained over recent years that they are pay- ing a fortune for permits to ply for hire at their
local railway station, and yet when they complain to the coun- cil about the station management mis-managing the area (ie. bringing in private hire vehicles, not clearing private motors off the taxi ranks, etc), the council does nothing about it.
Go tell it to the taxi drivers in Brighton! What with exorbitant permit fees, relocating the sta- tion rank etc., it’s a tad chaotic down there at the
moment. It’s all down to the status of the land on which the railway station ranks are situated. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the forecourt at the railway station is private land, owned by the railway or the management company. For that reason and that reason alone, the licensing authority has no jurisdiction over activities or vehicle movement on that land. Indeed, the same applies to supermarket car parks – which again are usually on private land.
F ICTION F ACT
Many local authorities are still maintaining a condition of licence that all licensed taxis and PHVs have to carry first aid kits and fire
extinguishers.
The above shouldn’t really be called ‘fiction’ because it’s still going on. However, the factual argument against setting this condition has been
in place for some considerable time: the Health and Safety Executive states quite clearly that any first aid kit in a taxi/PHV should be present only for use for the driver him- self. It is not intended that the driver should administer first aid to any passenger, on the basis that (a) there are too many medical risks to both driver and passenger; and (b) relatively few drivers are professionally trained in first aid procedures. Therefore the requirement that these compulsory first aid kits must contain so many plasters, so many safety pins etc. is a nonsense.
F ICTION
F 42
ACT
It would appear that when a complaint is made to the local council about the conduct of a driver, the council always takes the side of the complainant
and never sides with the driver, on the basis that “there’s no smoke without fire” and the driver is often deemed not to be fit and proper, whether or not he has had a full and fair hearing either in front of Committee or in the Magistrates’ Court.
If ever there was a fistful of reasons to install a multi-camera CCTV system in every licensed vehicle in the country – whether by choice or
We’ve banged on about fire extinguishers for a long time: If such a condition of licence is in place, does the licensing authority train their drivers in the use of fire extinguishers? If they must be carried by way of condition of licence, they should be stowed safely away from any passenger – many of whom have used them as a weapon against the driver. They must be the proper (dry powder) product for use in a vehicle – many local authorities do not make this stipulation. We’ve told PHTM readers before about one local authority who insisted that their compulsory fire extinguisher had to be a particular ‘model’ which had to be obtained from one of two local stockists – neither of which carried that product.
JANUARY 2020
mandate – then this is the main one. Notwithstanding the safety both of the driver and passenger, the number of false accusations made against drivers: anything from inappropri- ate language to sexual advances, taking the wrong money, arguing over a route… the list is endless – would reduce dra- matically with the presence of evidence-gathering cameras and, if necessary, sound.
This is why PHTM and the National Association have banged on about CCTV for most of the couple of years in light of our driver safety campaign. Sure, it’s an expense. It’s quite a large initial layout (although you can get proper systems now on tick… get in touch). But you won’t have to convince any licensed driver who has been victim of a false accusation and has lost his livelihood as a result, that if he’d had CCTV evidence it wouldn’t have happened.
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