ATTENTION A PROTECT OUR DRIVERS PR
ACTION NEEDED NOW! GET OUR TRADE BACK TO WORK!
We have sent the following letter to every licensing authority in the UK, setting out our campaign for the temporary installation of properly constructed and tested protection screens in all PHV and HCs. THIS HAS TO HAPPEN. This letter will also be sent to the Transport Minister, the Department for Transport, and as many MPs as can be contacted by as many of you as possible. We also hope to get the issue raised in Parliamentary Question Time. If you are in agreement, please spread the word far and wide… and of course get one of these screens installed for yourselves. STAY SAFE – STAY WELL!
Dear Colleagues: REF: Protection screens in licensed saloon taxis and PHVs
We are writing to all licensing authorities across the United Kingdom at this unprecedented time in history, to appeal to your sense of urgency in respect of the protection of the public in your district – which includes licensed private hire and taxi drivers, whose health and safety is being compromised to an alarming extent during the current spread of Covid-19.
When the Government eventually opens up the country by releasing the current lockdown, it is proposed that this will be a gradual process, and you know very well that this will not solve the country’s problems overnight. The truth is that the after-effects of the lockdown, and the virus itself, are destined to last for many months. Public transport will be curtailed; bus, Underground and train schedules will be reduced, and millions of people will require transport back to work, back to school, back to get together with their families.
That is where our industry comes in: we are well and truly the fourth emergency service, as has already been proven over the past weeks. However, there are thousands of drivers who make up this industry who are very vulnerable, and they need protection urgently. We believe the installation of a temporary protection screen between the front and back compartment of the vehicle offers the best possible form of protection.
We are contacting you at this time because the NPHTA feels sufficiently strongly about this issue that, in conjunction with the
national trade newspaper Private Hire and Taxi Monthly (PHTM), we are mounting a campaign staunchly in favour of the installation of as many protection screens into licensed saloon PHVs and taxis, and licensed minibuses, as is possible to help lower the transmission of the virus, to protect passengers and drivers alike – provided of course that the screens are fit for purpose.
We preface this campaign by acknowledging that the decision of each licensed driver to carry on working during the lockdown is entirely their choice. However, that choice has been taken out of a lot of their hands: they must continue to work in order to feed their family, and not lose their home from non-payment of rent, mortgage and all the other overheads facing an industry whose members are mainly self-employed. Since the government support schemes have fallen very short of being applicable to the majority of trade members, as regulators you shoulder a burden of responsibility to protect and support those you regulate.
Further, as you will read within the pages of PHTM, literally hundreds of drivers have been specially trained and have adjusted the type of work they undertake in order to provide backup transport for the NHS and other healthcare workers, even patients, thereby alleviating pressure from ambulance drivers and paramedics who can then turn their focus to the front line more efficiently. This is proving once again that, in more ways than one, our drivers are definitively the fourth emergency service.
As you all know, purpose-built hackney carriages (black cabs) and hackney conversions have a partition between the front and rear compartment as standard specification. For that reason many passengers may feel safer and more confident using those vehicles during the current Covid-19 lockdown and social distancing requirements.
But what about private hire? – and indeed, what about the thousands of saloon hackney carriages that are licensed outside the big towns and cities? In recent weeks several manufacturers have devised a partition screen dividing the front seats from the rear compartment of these vehicles, with a view to reducing the transmission of droplets from coughs and sneezes which are the main source of the spread of this dreadful virus.
There is no doubt as to the efficacy and positive reasons for installing a protection screen in a PHV. However, we are fully aware that there are many doubts being voiced from all quarters. With this in mind we thought it prudent to set out those points and try
....WE ARE THE FOURTH EMERGENCY SERVICE.... MAY 2020
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