CROSS-BORDER HIRING:
As explained above, the legislation in this matter is very much of the ‘golden rule’ because if the literal rule was applied then it would be absurd that a person would apply for a licence in one controlled district to work in another and the mischief rule would never come into the equation because the 76 Act is very much an adoptive Act for each authority.
The purposive approach would in fact bring into question the operator who willingly and knowingly allowed customer requests to be despatched to vehicles that had made themselves available in an area that neither the vehicle, driver nor operator were licensed when they had a legal option of sub-contracting that booking to an operator in the area where the customer was requesting a service.
There are a few recent court cases that are bandied around when this subject is discussed, usually Milton Keynes v Skyline 2017 and Reading v Ali 2018.
To be clear on this, and please feel free to ask your legal representatives if this is correct or not; but at no time during these cases was the location of the vehicle when it was made available discussed by the courts and therefore no judgement has ever been made on this argument.
Milton Keynes v Skyline was a legal argument regarding the automated sub-contracting of a booking.
Reading v Ali was a legal argument regarding Mr Ali plying for hire when visible on the Uber app. It is interesting to note that Lord Justice Flaux consid- ered that because Mr Ali’s vehicle did not display signage for the operator that he worked for, then he could not be plying for hire. Mr Ali is licensed by TfL, which forbids signage on private hire vehicles which only have a small roundel (a circular sticker) in the front and rear windscreens. These are hardly visible in the rear when the glass is tinted.
THE COUNCIL’S RESPONSIBILITIES
While many authorities heard that the Deregulation Act 2015 was open season for drivers to be licensed anywhere (usually in the easiest and cheapest
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authority) and then go and work elsewhere in the UK, no one knows who blamed the Deregulation Act initially and if it was legally supported.
However, several councils which are verbal in quoting the Deregulation Act 2015 tend to be the ones from which it’s easy to obtain a licence and have ‘robustly’ streamlined their application process to assist drivers in gaining a licence from them, and then expect the authority in which this driver and vehicle operate to carry out enforcement for them. This is an obvious case of having one’s cake and eating it.
Everything about the 76 Act relates to localism and control.
1. The authority’s fees charged 2. The authority’s driver requirements 3. The authority’s vehicle requirements 4. The authority’s operators requirements 5. The authority’s decision on ‘fit and proper’ 6. The authority’s ability to enforce all three licences
7. The authority’s ability to grant, suspend or refuse a licence
8. The authority’s ability to protect the safety of its constituents and visitors
Localism is key to public safety. Control over operators, drivers and vehicles working within a district is paramount to safeguarding.
If an authority is unable to enforce the eight points above then they have no control and public safety and safeguarding is irrelevant, because the industry has gone back to 1975 where no enforcement was undertaken.
To put this into perspective, we sent Freedom of Information requests to authorities within the latest areas in which a certain national company advertised for drivers to work for them. We asked how many times during the years, 2016-2021 inclusive, had enforcement action been undertaken in the other authorities’ areas that are within the zone and how many vehicles were checked.
The results are staggering. MAY 2022
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