OUR INDUSTRY
Whilst, from the drivers’ perspective, especially those who have many years of experience, ending cross- border working or remote licensing may be the answer to their prayers. But for councils it is a question of either ending cross-border hiring or introducing a national standard and empowering officers, both financially and through new powers, to enforce against any licensed vehicle or driver from anywhere working in their area.
From a driver’s perspective, ending remote licensing would restore our earning potential. It would likely also put large numbers out of work, but a job that pays less than half minimum wage per hour after expenses is surely not a job worth keeping. The trade has often been accused of greed, and competition from an influx of newcomers attracted to the disruptive technology who flock to the local authority offering the line of least resistance for entry to the trade, is regarded by the general public as something we perhaps deserve.
However, the travelling public often overestimate how much drivers actually do earn after expenses. When confronted with the reality, most people agree that nobody deserves to earn less than the minimum wage per hour, not even taxi/private hire drivers. Drivers should be able to choose to work longer hours occasionally out of a desire to pursue their goals (for example: to pay for an upcoming holiday), and not be forced to do so week after week, just to scrape by.
Meanwhile, for local authorities, remote licensing leaves them powerless to maintain high standards, when the option of shopping around elsewhere for licences undermines such endeavours, and they may end up joining the race to the bottom in order to ensure that their taxi and private hire licensing departments remain viable.
There are also issues of enforcement. When drivers and vehicles working in their area are licensed with another authority, local enforcement officers have no authority over them. The revenue stream for the purpose of such enforcement derived from licensing fees no longer heads in their direction, but to that of the issuing authority in question who may or may not bother to enforce its drivers and vehicles licensed remotely.
PHTM JULY 2024
Despite much talk about these national licensing standards, which would go some way towards addressing the issue of lack of local regulatory control, but would do little to address that of saturation, low productivity and exploitation suffered by drivers, it is clear that, approaching a General Election, the future is a guessing game. Whoever wins the election, issues regarding the licensing of private hire vehicles, operators, and taxis are likely to be very low on the list of any incoming government’s priorities, at least in the near term if we have a change of government.
For this reason, James Button, of the Institute of Licensing, has proposed a plan allowing local authorities to take the matter entirely out of their own hands by relinquishing what little control they may still exercise in their own areas and handing it all to, what he calls, a Principal Licensing Authority. This would be an existing local council that already issues licences to large numbers of drivers, vehicles and operators working far and wide. There are a handful of potential contenders to assume this de-facto role of national issuer of licences, and an obvious choice is rather close to my area, Cannock Chase...
Mr Button outlines his proposal in the May edition of PHTM:
https://shorturl.at/8W5aA
Each local authority would retain its staff and officers to
deal with day-to-day licence applications,
enforcement and collection of licensing fees on behalf of the Principal Authority, The local staff and officers would then presumably submit invoices to this authority for administration and enforcement costs incurred in their area.
At a recent IoL conference in Leicester, I did ask our Jim who elects this de-facto national licensing body, and how would it be accountable to the electorate as a whole, across the entire country and not just the citizens in its own area?
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