A POSTCODE LOTTERY
Was there really a need for taxi drivers to have to trawl through a complicated application process to justify their need for financial support when it is obvious that their income has been diminished as travel restrictions and national lockdowns have now been in place for nearly a year?
They are also well aware of the ongoing heavy monthly fixed costs that members of our trade are burdened with even if they do not work; and those that do work, then have to spend further money on PPE and fuel before they earn a penny.
Should councils not have made all this clear to Government?
Furthermore, new legislation for our industry is currently in consultation or actually being sanctioned in virtual council meetings taking place across the country; clean air zones, clean air zone and congestion charges, electric vehicles, implementation of national standards, including in-vehicle CCTV and training courses, as well as vehicle age limits and increases in licensing fees. But has anyone considered how our trade, whose members have been starved of proper financial support for so long are going to be able to pay for all this?
Just like buses and trains, our industry is an intrinsic part of the UK transport infrastructure. We are in fact the largest of these industries with thousands of operators and hundreds of thousands of drivers working in all weather, 24/7, 365 days a year to keep the UK moving. Therefore, we have to ask, why have we not been subsidised in the same way?
Why have we been ignored and forgotten?
Throughout this pandemic it is our drivers who have been on the frontline despite the obvious health risks - as highlighted by the latest ONS report that our drivers are three time more likely to die from Covid than those working in other profes- sions. They are the ‘unsung heroes’, the 4th emergency service, who have continued to work to support their local communities: to transport NHS staff and key workers; to deliver food and prescriptions to the old and the vulnerable and now more recently to take the elderly for their Covid vaccinations, often doing this at heavily discounted rates or even for free.
However, the busy trading periods - Easter, Summer, Valentines weekend and Christmas - that normally boost their income have been and gone; and as towns and cities across the UK have turned into ghost towns, these are desperate times for all our drivers who are now genuinely struggling to survive.
To be clear, due to this continued lack of adequate financial support, licensed drivers are handing their vehicle plates and badges back in droves; we have all seen the distressing images of taxis parked up in their thousands.
We predict that if you do not act now – when the country opens up again in June and the anticipated upturn begins - our trade’s numbers will be decimated. There will not be enough licensed HC, PH and chauffeur drivers working to ferry the young, the elderly, the professionals, the holiday- makers, the tourists, the students, the schoolchildren, the drunks, the sick, the vulnerable and the disabled to ensure that they and the general public all reach their destination safely and on time.
What chaos and extra burden will this be for any council?
Whether this unfair allocation of grant money is ILLEGAL is yet to be confirmed but it is most certainly UNJUST
All members of our trade are angry and frustrated and our industry is at breaking point.
David Lawrie, Director of the NPHTA handed this article, including the Table of Grants, to the Department for Transport at a meeting with them on Thursday 4th March which will then be sent on to Government.
We ask all members of our trade: national unions, local associations, operators, drivers, and local authority licensing officers to now:
JOIN US IN THIS FIGHT!
Please send this article to your councils your local MPs and your local press
share it on all their social media platforms
SEE FULL LIST OF DRIVER GRANTS ON PAGES 50-53
MARCH 2021 49
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