REFLECTIONS OF AN GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Good intentions, Good law, and Good luck!
The 2020s will be remembered in the future as that time when our industry moved from a broad framework of fairly sensible and workable regulation to a point where regulating taxis and private hire has become a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of ever more convoluted requirements.
My choice of the word ‘requirement’ rather than ‘regulation’ is deliberate because policy makers appear to have moved away from Legislation (Laws) and Regulation to a whole plethora of guidance which is enforceable, obligatory or even I guess hoped for. Anything really, that gets something into print and delays the day when legislation is actually tackled, seems to be the case. It appears that any prevailing issues are scooped up and regurgitated as the answer. In some cases, they may be, but it is often unclear what the question was to start with. What is it we are trying to fix? Is this really what a responsible industry, employing hundreds or thousands of people directly and indirectly and transporting millions of passengers, deserves or needs? Surely it is time to either leave the industry alone or to carry out a professional root and branch review based on the current technologies and practice and with an eye to the future?
The alternative is clearly heading towards even very small organisations being strangled with red tape, unnecessary overheads and increasing vulnerability to missing something. Many councils around the country are not resourced to regulate what is an increasingly complex industry. Whilst I am the last person on the planet to criticise regulation that is there to enhance public safety, its only purpose in my view, I am steadfastly against the patchwork of quick fixes, bright (sic) ideas and ‘must do somethings’ that appear to be bom- barding the industry, pell-mell, on a much too frequent basis. This self-serving bureaucratic and frankly muddled approach is not good law, it is not good regulation and quite honestly it is difficult to see what it is all intended to fix. I do agree that some aspects are sensible, but if those aspects are over- whelmed and lost in a maelstrom of ‘guidance’ the outcomes are increasingly dubious, they just add overheads, are difficult for regulators to implement and then regulate, achieve very little and may harm what was a well ordered society.
Where Did That Come From?
In the tabloids they would add ‘secret’ to describe the meeting that took place last Thursday – ‘Secret Meeting’ sounds so much more salacious and intriguing doesn’t it and maybe given the content that would be a more accurate heading. The great and probably not so good of the cab trade were invited to a meeting in London to discuss a range of issues including our old friend ‘ABBA’ and a brand-new friend (sic)
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Regional Licensing. I would like a pound for every time I go to any kind of meeting these days and listen to the ‘Wolver- hampton issue’ being discussed. I would also like a fiver (i.e. not discussed quite so often but raised nonetheless) for every time Uber’s regional approach to driver allocations is raised normally from a critical perspective.
The industry appears to have broadly coalesced (the closest we get to actually agreeing) around the concept of national licensing standards, minimum national licensing standards or similar. The subject of super regulators such as Wolverhampton, appear to be in the state of; the jury still being out whilst increasing numbers of operators, drivers and vehicles are happy to be licensed there. But Regional Licensing is some- thing new. Another good idea spun up by people who don’t run cab companies for a living and never have done? A mouthpiece for our one ‘regional operator’? Or is something else at play here? The beauty of local licensing with all its critics and their criticisms is that it is accountable. Councils should and many do take account of the local economy, geography, culture and well being of their residents/citizens. Within local licensing is also the concept of local protection, no big player can just bulldoze its way across the country, no, even the biggest have to apply for local licences and play by local rules, or at least appear to, making much of the country unviable for anything but local companies.
The oft parodied differences between councils provide much chortling and amusement at trade meetings with the extremes of licensing even between neighbouring councils being held up to ridicule as a warm up crowd pleaser. But think carefully before ditching them, don’t they hold back the flood? Aren’t they the reason big players are not in your town or city? Does it matter if your council is different to every other in the country if you only have to deal with that one? Twelve or fourteen regional licensing authorities may or may not be a fantastic idea, but before our new friends start convincing government that the trade is behind it perhaps the trade needs to think about or even discuss its merits or downsides? Just sayin!
Consolidation – Friend or Foe?
The industry is undergoing a generational adjustment. Mom and Pop businesses across the country that it was assumed would one day would be taken over by the kids have seen seven years of battling VC funded companies, two years of being ravaged by Covid and returned to see guidance being issued like ticker tape, costs rising, transactions down and drivers rarer than hens’ teeth. As owners move from their fifties to their sixties to their seventies, as they realise that the road ahead will be based on ever tightening and in some cases pointless regulation/guidance, fighting the giants and
MAY 2022
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