ALL THINGS LICENSING
Article by Mike Smith, Senior Specialist for Licensing and Community Safety at Guildford Borough Council and Vice-Chair of the Institute of Licensing South East Region.
Please note that this article represents my own views which are not presented as the views of the Institute of Licensing or Guildford BC.
Taxi & private hire driver training and assessment
The updated Best Practice Guidance (BPG) has brought about a shift in the DfT’s recommendations in respect of driver training, in particular the requirement to complete a recognised vocational qualification which will likely leave many licensing authorities, including my own which requires such a vocational qualification, wondering what to do.
In addition, technological changes of possibly an unrecognisable proportion between versions of the BPG have resulted in a change in position on private hire driver knowledge assessment. However, whilst there appears to be a move away from requiring vocational level training and knowledge testing of PH drivers, recent additional disability legislation and statutory guidance appears to significantly highlight the importance of training in respect of drivers being able to carry out their role effectively and to the highest of standards.
Surely, it can’t also be right that such an important role as a licensed driver, who is entrusted to transport people, including the young, elderly and vulnerable, where the role is highly regulated through the licensing regime, does not require any formal training?
As such, I want to explore driver training in the new BPG and associated legislation and set out what councils should be expecting drivers to complete.
Firstly, you may well ask: “Why don’t all licensing authorities do the same thing?” The intention of every set of government guidance has always been to try and set out a consistent position of what local authorities should be doing. However guidance is just that – it is there to guide the authority but ultimately only legislation can dictate how something should be done.
This was very much the intention of National Minimum Standards, for which the Government committed to legislating following the recommendations of the Task and Finish Group way back in 2018.
64 What happened to National Standards?
Simply put, the Government says it remains comitted to the idea of National Standards, but with an election required soon, it has run out of time to legislate for National Standards in Parliament before an election.
A Parliamentary debate in late January confirmed the position that whilst the Government remained ‘committed’ to National Minimum Standards, it had run out of time before the election but wanted to bring these in ‘in due course’, See:
https://bit.ly/3wfBaoP
Unfortunately, it remains clear that updating extremely out of date taxi licensing legislation remains a low priority for Government, leaving both councils and the trade in an incredibly difficult position regarding regu- lation and consistency of standards, yet again waiting for when ‘in due course’ appears on our calendars.
What training and assessment do taxi and private hire drivers need to do?
Before I look at this question, I want to summarise the position up to 2020 as set out in DfT’s BPG 2010.
The Previous (2010) Best Practice Guidance
In this version of the BPG, the word ‘training’ appeared 17 times. The main section on training set out that whilst the DfT had no plans to make training courses or qualifications mandatory, there may have been an advantage in encouraging drivers to obtain one of the nationally recognised vocational qualifications relevant to the licensed trade.
It also explained that some local authorities had established their own schemes covering: customer care, including meeting the needs of people with disabilities; relevant legislation; road safety; the use of maps and GPS; the handling of emergencies; conflict management and where required, literacy and numeracy. It also set out the importance of training in the context of the 2012 Olympics which intended to leave a legacy of more accessible transport.
The BPG also summarised that: “Authorities may wish to note that nationally recognised qualifications and training programmes sometimes have advantages over purely local arrangements (for example, in that the qualification will be more widely recognised)” and made a number of references to this section when discussing training requirements, suggesting a position of recommending the use of a vocational scheme of training for licensed drivers.
MARCH 2024 PHTM
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