SCOTTISH NEWS FROM THE SPHA END OF ‘CONTRACT HIRE EXEMPTION’ IN SCOTLAND
Article by Eddie Grice NPHTA Board Member for Scotland and General Secretary of the Scottish Private Hire Association
www.spha.scot
office@spha.scot
Under the provisions of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, there exists an exemption from the private hire licensing regime for when a vehicle is being used to transport passengers under
an exclusive hire lasting for a period of no less than 24 hours. This is known as ‘contract hire exemption’. The specific legalese relating to this comes from Section 22(1)(c) of the 1982 Act, but in plain terms: if a car is transporting a single client within a single day, they are exempt from licensing, however, if they take a second customer within a single day then the car and driver must be licenced as private hire.
The real-world practice of contract hire exemptions has led to many murky grey areas as well as flagrant abuse of the provisions. So, the Scottish Government responded following concerns being voiced. The Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015 contained a section that would abolish contract hire exemptions.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the implementation of the removal of the exemption was paused. However, the Scottish Government is now recommencing its work on this and has begun the preparatory work required to conclude this change to the licensing regime. At some stage, fairly soon, a number of passenger carrying operations, such as chauffeur services, executive hire services, events transport services, and travel and transfer services, will be brought into the private hire licensing regime in Scotland. The cars and drivers of these services will be required to be licensed under the terms of the 1982 Act.
As they probably should though. They are carrying passengers from A to B in the same manner and doing so for commercial gain. However, there are some serious problems that could appear overnight for these operators and drivers if they end up being required to apply for private hire licences.
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First, because these types of operation have been occurring outside of the scope of licensing, many of the drivers themselves have managed to operate without criminal records or disclosure checks and many of them won’t be members of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme. Speculatively, some of these drivers might find themselves in the awkward position of being refused a private hire licence if their local authority deems that they are not fit and proper to hold one.
As to the vehicles, we are going to find a fair number of these vehicles won’t comply with existing private hire policies as things currently stand. There are concerns surrounding whether the vehicles will meet existing standards and specifications.
Some policies will cause major headaches. Some local authorities still have strict window tint rules. Show me an executive hire car that doesn’t have privacy glass. Some authorities have a ban on rearward facing, conference style seating, but some chauffeurs use this type of vehicle. Some local authorities won’t license a particular make and model of vehicle as a private hire car if that same make and model has been approved for use as a public hire taxi, but within the executive hire circles, some of those makes and models may exist.
Additionally, policies vary from one local authority to another, so there will be some serious inconsistencies in how these cars are brought into licensing. If a chauffeur or executive service that runs vehicles with conference style seats notices that those types of cars are being licensed quite fine in South Lanarkshire while being rejected in Glasgow there will, no doubt, be complaints heard about fairness (or a lack thereof) in the system. It’s an issue that private hire operators and drivers have had to put up with forever and we’ve just got used to it in many regards, however, for the operators coming into licensing due to a change in the exemption rules who have been operating for many years without the need to answer to local authority regulatory committees, it will be a bitter pill to swallow and may lead to a rather loud outcry.
And, we’ve not even mentioned booking office requirements, which is a whole other matter!
MARCH 2023 PHTM
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