GREEN MEANS GO LEEDS CLEAN AIR ZONE:
Heading ONLY THIRTY DRIVERS GET GREEN LOANS
Just 30 taxi drivers have received loans from a scheme set up to help them buy greener vehicles, despite more than 2,000 applying. Cabbies in Leeds can claim up to £10,000 to buy cars exempt from up- coming clean air zone (CAZ) charges. But most have wait- ed months for a decision and believe the council cannot cope with the vol- ume of applicants. According to BBC News, Leeds City Council said it had to be responsible with public money and “due diligence takes time” . The CAZ was origi- nally due to come into effect by Jan- uary 2020 but has been delayed until July at the earliest. Certain vehicles entering the city centre would have to pay a charge under the scheme. The government gave the council £29m to implement the zone, with £23m earmarked to help businesses adapt and get greener vehicles. From 1 April, taxi and private hire drivers in the city were invited to ap- ply for interest-free loans of up to £10,000 or non-re- payable grants worth up to £1,500. By June the authori- ty’s documents show- ed it had received more than 2,000 loan applications. Documents seen by
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the BBC suggested the government had instructed the coun- cil to reach a de- cision on these by September. But by that time, according to a council report, just £20,000 had been paid out in loans, while grants worth £55,000 had been awarded. At the end of November, just 19 loans had been paid out. The most recent figures show 30 loans have been paid, and a further 69 provisionally ap- proved, the council said. Despite this, the authority said it was “on track to process every pend- ing application with- in the next two months” . A spokesman said the council expect- ed to have paid “in the region” of 350 loans once all re- maining applicat- ions had been pro- cessed. The scheme would remain open “until the end of 2020 or until fund- ing runs out”, he said. Adil Hamid, treasur- er of the Leeds Private Hire Drivers Organisation, brand- ed the handling of loans and grants as a “cock-up”. “What we were promised and what has actually hap- pened are totally different,” he said. The BBC has been told that loan docu- ments and a 25- to 45-minute telephone interview about ap- plicants’ finances
closed on the basis of missing docu- ments
• On contacting the council to complain about this, drivers were advised to reapply and told the case would not be re-opened
were only available in English. Mr Hamid said this caused problems because “a lot of the drivers are from dif- ferent countries”. He further criticised a lack of consistency in the handling of applications, and said he knew of cases in which dri- vers “in the exact same circumstances” had received differ- ent decisions. Many drivers had resigned themselves to paying the con- gestion charge, he said. Others who had been rejected had either borrowed money from family to buy a new vehicle or had taken out high-interest loans. The BBC has seen details of one case in which an appli- cant who had re- ceived a loan agree- ment was told he would be paid “ next week” on three occasions. He had identified a suitable replacement vehicle, and sent the details in a “pro- posed vehicle notice” to the council. How- ever, the authority told him it would need three weeks to carry out a HPI check before the
loan was paid out. While waiting for the check - which could be performed ins- tantly online - he entered into a finance agreement with a dealership to secure the new car. When it was found he had applied for finance, his council loan application was rejected and he chose to apply for a grant instead. The waiting time for vehicle checks has since been reduced to 48 hours.
What’s gone wrong? The CAZ in Leeds will affect motorists driving inside the outer ring road. The council set up a team of ten people to process loan ap- plications.
It is
understood staff re- cruited to work as underwriters had lit- tle or no prior ex- perience of per- forming financial checks and have received minimal training on the job. The BBC has also been told that: • Drivers have re- peatedly been sent demands to pro- vide documents already submitted
• Some applications were incorrectly
• Drivers have com- plained of receiv- ing rejection let- ters with just one line of explanation, months after they first applied.
What does the council say? The council said £7.3m of govern- ment funding had been earmarked to help the taxi and private hire sector and “ could not be used for any other purpose”. There is therefore no incen- tive for the council not to allocate this money to the trade,” a spokesman said. He said officers were “processing financial support ap- plications as swiftly as possible” but it was necessary to ensure applicants were able to repay loans, and collecting necessary documen- tation “can some- times take longer than expected”. Loans would only be available to drivers who had passed the council’s licensing process, which would have required them to pass an English comprehension test covering reading, writing and speaking. The spokesman added: • The law prevented
the council from disclosing the rea- sons for loans be- ing rejected, and unsuccessful appli- cants were advised to contact the credit agency used by the authority
• The council was “aware of a very small percentage of cases” where there were multi- ple requests for information previ- ously provided
• This was “due to human error and the volume of ap- plications being handled” and “we have apologised directly to those inconvenienced” . NPHTA comment:
It
is unfortunate that the trade in Leeds has fallen victim to such a series of mishaps and malad- ministration: firstly from central Govern- ment, whose failure in providing ANPR software delayed the start of what would have been the next city after London (also Birmingham, which was similarly delayed) to set down a CAZ. And now the trade’s un- certainty is height- ened by this series of setbacks locally, as a result of assign- ing a budget, and a rather momentous task, to council offi- cers who patently do not have the requi- site experience to deal with the admin side of that task – let alone the mental and financial anguish suffered by the vehi- cle proprietors.
JANUARY 2020
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