Andy Peters Brighton & Hove Cab Trade Association
info@bhcta.co.uk www.bhcta.co.uk
GETTING IT LICKED
As Uber continues in its quest to monopolise the trade and work extremely closely with the government, our ‘local’ colleagues at Gatwick/Crawley are up in arms with the multi-billion dollar company for doing further deals with the airport allowing Uber cars from everywhere, including TfL PHVs, to use its facility that makes them available for hire outside of their respective licensing areas by giving them space to do just that.
For example, I understand that non-locally licensed PHVs can head to Gatwick unbooked and make themselves available for hire. Or if one of these drop- off at Gatwick they can do the same. I call this ‘loitering with intent’ as it cannot be anything else but that.
I understand the Crawley cab trade has been battling with the council about this. The council bods appear to have been sitting on the information needed to take action for at least nine weeks since the story broke at the end of May this year. Of course, it can take time to do the research, but I have no doubt that the council, like other similar councils, will not do anything due to fear of crossing swords with the mighty giant.
But let’s be clear on this, whilst it is the operator that deals with the bookings, in my opinion it is the driver of the PHV that is making itself available for hire outside his/her licensing area. So, the driver is the one that should be chased by any council where this occurs and this includes my own council.
I won’t go into the details of where legislation was put in place in the LGMP Act 1976 to enable local enforce- ment as Lee Ward and Mark Jennings have made it extremely clear here:
https://tinyurl.com/76lgmpact
I do have to bring up an example of where there appears to be more control of ice cream vans than the cab trade. If I were to run an ice cream van in Brighton & Hove, I would need a local mobile street trader’s licence costing £710 per year, where the council sets the conditions of licensing: where I can trade and for how long. I would also be subject to food standards / environmental health requirements for the safety of the public.
If I then decided to ‘whippy-it’ over to Eastbourne, just along the coast I am absolutely sure that the local
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‘Mr Softy’ gang would soon be after my sprinkles!
Additionally, Eastbourne council would no doubt prosecute me for not having the correct licence. The way round this would be to have an Eastbourne mobile street traders’ licence as well and pay the required fee and be under Eastbourne’s licence conditions. The good thing here is that licensing fees are payable to the licensing department that I chose to ‘legally’ work in.
This would be repeated for every area that I wished to sell my delicious wares and each licensing authority would benefit from the licensing fees that keep the local licensing departments funded.
HAD A NICE CHAT
I needed to go to London recently so took the train to Victoria, which by the way has advertising dominated by Uber right smack in your face. I jumped into a very clean London cab and gave the driver the address, which was Guys Hospital (don’t panic, I’m fine). I’d taken a taxi there before, which cost about £14, so when the meter reached £25 I did question if I’d given the right address. I asked the driver, and yes, I had given the wrong hospital because I thought Guys & St Thomas were the same. The same Trust but not the same hospital. Completely my fault, but I did have a nice tour around the city.
So, we get to the end of the trip, where the driver kindly drove right into gated area, and I went to pay by card (don’t worry, I gave a cash tip as well) but there was a connection problem. I told him that I was a hackney driver in Brighton and we get the same issues down there. Eventually it all went through and he asked me if we still have issues with London cab drivers using our rank. I laughed and said yes and he totally disagreed with what his colleagues were doing. I then asked him how he knew about the issue and he said he’d read about it. I laughed again and told him that I was the ‘culprit’ that posted on Twitter and PHTM along with the photos. I didn’t get the driver’s name but I think he was driving on cab licence 41837 so if the driver is reading this, then email me at
info@bhcta.co.uk and I will give you a name check here next month.
SPEAKING OF LONDON CABBIES
Further to the last topic, once again we have the usual issue of inconsiderate London cab drivers who think it is acceptable to use our ranks for free, private all-day parking as in the example shown. The annoyed local
JUNE 2024 PHTM
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