GMB PERSPECTIVE FLASH BULLETIN: THE DISRUPTERS ARE BACKING OFF!
GMB representative from Brighton and Hove, Andy Peters, is this month bringing
us the latest appy news from down south:
STOP PRESS! Uber announces that it is no longer allowing Lewes DC hackneys on its platform! Well, that’s great news for us here in Brighton & Hove because we have been swamped with these Lewes hacks predomi- nantly working here and never ever being seen in their own town with exception of the old school hacks.
We are currently waiting to see if this is a new Uber national policy. However, no doubt they will just convert to PHVs and be back soon. An ‘Intended Use Policy’ for PHVs and operators as can currently be imposed on hackneys is the only way to combat this blatant abuse of the current system... in my opinion.
OLA: Having been at the Ola application for the Brighton & Hove private hire operator licence in May 2019, and listening to the keenness of the very nice and well present- ed Ola rep Karl Luztow to gain the licence, we were quite surprised to learn in early March last year that Ola had decided to withdraw from the city. This is especially so as it has had the policy to go wherever Uber goes. Ola is currently operating in Wales, and also launched in London a few weeks ago running private hire cars and not Lon- don hackney carriages - to which I will be referring later.
One interesting aspect emerged when Karl Luztow was questioned by the (now very clued up) Licensing Panel about Ola using vehicles not licensed by the council in the same way that Uber does by bringing in hundreds of vehicles from Lewes, Southampton, Portsmouth, Havant and the rest, all predominantly working here that are uncontrollable by the council. We call these OOT’s (Out of town cars).
Karl was very eager to inform the panel that the Ola policy would only allow two jobs in a 24-hour period to be allotted to any vehicle not licensed by the council. The Licensing Panel were pleased to hear this because of the great concern over the way Uber works here, and I considered that this was a very welcome commitment from Ola. So I thought at the time “Thumbs up for that”. The conclusion of the Ola application was
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that whilst the council would normally grant a five-year operator licence, in this case it only granted a licence for one year. Proba- bly to see how it goes.
However Ola stated that (at the time) they were not ready to actually launch so the council allowed the granted licence to be on hold until it was ready to do so.
After the meeting I had a very friendly chat with Karl and could clearly see that he was not aware as to how the trade worked down here, which seemed to be different in other places where Ola was already operating, such as in Wales.
For example, here in the city all the local established companies such as Streamline, Radio Cabs and City Cabs run mixed fleets of hackney carriages and private hire vehi- cles that all use the same council controlled rate of fares as applied to the hackney car- riage tariffs. For many years this has allowed the public to have a fully transparent charg- ing mechanism using council controlled sealed meters.
Uber on the other hand only uses PHV’s and does not use council controlled sealed meters, and can set whatever fluctuating rate it deems suitable - which is perfectly legal. Additionally it doesn’t use ‘local’ hack- ney carriages because as we know, a hackney carriage is forbidden to charge any rates higher than the council controlled fares. So it would be illegal for hackneys to charge the Uber ‘surge pricing’ of one and a half, two and even three times its standard rate of fares, whatever that is.... at whatever time Uber wishes to implement it.
Karl told me that Ola would be different because not only would it have PHVs on its system but also local hackney carriages, with the customer having a choice of book- ing one or the other.
He explained further that the PHVs would charge whatever the Ola rate was and the hackneys would only charge the local meter rate. I did question this because knowing that Ola would be using the same method of ‘surge pricing’ and charging much higher rates during these times (although Karl could not give me what the standard rate would be), I couldn’t quite work out why the customer would opt to book a PHV during the ‘surge pricing’ peri- od when there was the choice of booking a hackney carriage which was only charging the local council controlled rates. I don’t really recall that there was much of a response to this.
I doubt this is the reason why Ola has with- drawn from starting up in Brighton & Hove, but as yet we have not had a definitive rea- son. However, Licensing Chair Jackie O’Quinn was quite right when quoted in the local press that “the market is too full” - which is certainly evident from what must be well over 400 PHVs working in the city that are not licensed by the council.
One other point which may have put Ola off is that there is a condition of licensing here that any operator with a 100+ fleet must have 20 per cent wheelchair accessible vehicles.
In fact the Brighton & Hove fleet of licensed hackney carriages is 50 per cent WAV com- pliant, which is something that for many years the local trade here has worked on with the council to ensure that people with all types of disabilities are catered for. So it could be possible that this condition of licensing may have been a contributing fac- tor to Uber withdrawing from the city, which is disappointing because competition is good, as long as it is fair and on an even ground.
However, withdrawing from the licence now doesn’t mean that it would not make anoth- er application at another time - so maybe one day the city will have Ola competing with all the local established cab companies.
We shall see…
Andy Peters Secretary GMB Brighton & Hove Taxi Section
andy.peters@
gmbtaxis.org.uk
MARCH 2020
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