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issue 218
issue 218
Auriga Systems Data Despatch
01582 466800
www.auriga.co.uk
www.phtm.co.uk november 2010 The official newspaper of the National Private Hire Association BOUNDARIES BLASTED!
On the 8th October the Administrative Court handed down the judgment in the case of Stockton on Tees Borough Coun- cil –v– Fidler, Hussain and Zaman- ian.
What it amounts to is this: Whereas the Berwick case did not find that hackney car- riages operating as private hire vehicles outside their area was not lawful, but raised some question marks about whether Berwick should have issued the licences in the first place – this decision effectively says that these Berwick vehicles working in Stockton- on-Tees were acting lawfully.
In all the history of cross-border cases that have been before the courts since the 1976 Act came in, this judgment is without doubt the most dev- astating piece of case law that has emanat- ed from the courts.
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In a lengthy and com- plicated judgment of some 24 pages, Lord Justice Munby and Justice Langstaff put section 46 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provi- sions) Act 1976 under their magnifying glasses, and effec- tively highlighted what a seriously use- less piece of legislation this is. Obviously this is a view which has been held by most of the industry and licensing departments at local authorities for many years. Not to put too fine a point on it, if this section of legisla- tion had been sentenced to death, then Lord Justice Munby was the best executioner we could have had. Not only does the judgment make it clear that pri-
vate hire companies can make use of any hackney carriage wherever it may be licensed, but it effec- tively says that there is little or nothing that the local authority can do to stop this hap- pening.
As a final summing up of the case, Mr Jus- tice Langstaff said: “If it seems that there are nonetheless tensions between any policy of local licensing and regulation on the one hand, and the proper interpretation of the wording of statute as determined in this case, that must be a matter for considera- tion and review by Parliament rather than the Courts.”
So as in the Berwick judgment, and indeed dozens of other cross- border cases which have cost councils
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Lord Justice Munby
and the industry hun- dreds of thousands of pounds in arguing the rights and wrongs of this one single para- graph, the decision once again says that the Government needs to act. See Opinion on pages 10 and 11 for more details about the judgment, and its far reaching implica- tions.
See page 15
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