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 Borough Council.
The summer is well and truly upon us and I hope that the trade has been making the most of the recent fine spell, both at work and outside of it. I have just returned from my annual ‘pilgrimage’ to the 24 hours of Le Mans in France, which for those unfamiliar with the event is an endurance motorsport race where high-performance cars are driven around a circuit consisting of both purpose- built racetrack and public roads for 24 hours solid.
I often use this holiday as a great opportunity to catch up on professional publications of interest such as PHTM (obviously) and whilst sat up by the track early to grab a good spot to watch the start of the race reading the latest edition it occurred to me whether I could combine my passion for motorsport with my passion for licensing... So here goes:
Special Event/Prestige Vehicles - Plate Exemption
The Le Mans race features high performance cars from many renowned manufacturers including Porsche, Toyota, Cadillac, Corvette, Aston Martin, Peugeot and of course this year’s winner Ferrari. Whilst there are not many cars in the same ‘ilk’ working the roads as licensed taxi and private hire vehicles, in theory there is nothing preventing a proprietor from making an application to use a vehicle of this type as a private hire vehicle.
The ‘special event’ vehicle market is a growing one where the public look to obtain a noteworthy vehicle to transport them in style to a notable occasion. Many ‘prom’ type events feature graduates arriving in head turning vehicles which create a memorable impression for the start of the celebrations.
Although I am not going to get into the debate about the licensing of vehicles taking someone to an event such as this, although the law is clear that if a vehicle
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is being used for ‘hire and reward’ then it needs to be licensed; if a vehicle of this nature were licensed, then it is likely that the proprietor would be reluctant to drill a bolt into the bodywork of the vehicle in order to affix a licence plate.
The same is also the case in the high-end executive hire and chauffeur market where drivers of prestige model and specification vehicles are also unwilling to screw a licence plate into the exterior to display. This section of the market also transports individuals of particular status such as celebrities, VIPs and high net worth individuals who present the argument that their dignity may be compromised if they were to be seen in a licensed vehicle.
Certainly many companies themselves providing such a service pride themselves on an image of undertaking a professional chauffeured service protecting the discretion of their clients, which would be undermined if the company could be traced by the use of a licence plate.
The legislation, even in 1976, surprisingly catered for this eventuality with Section 75 (3) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 stating:
“Where a licence under section 48 of this Act is in force for a vehicle, the council which issued the licence may, by a notice in writing given to the proprietor of the vehicle, provide that paragraph (a) of subsection (6) of that section shall not apply to the vehicle on any occasion specified in the notice or shall not so apply while the notice is carried in the vehicle;”
JULY 2023 PHTM
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