Opinion
A view from the trade by B. M. ROLAND
THE NATIONAL PRIVATE HIRE ASSOCIATION 8 SILVER ST BURY BL9 0EX TEL: 0161 280 2800 FAX: 0161 280 7787 e-mail:
npha@btconnect.com
ACCESSIBILITY, CHAPTER 14, 16, 18?????!! HERE WE GO AGAIN...
I’m not entirely sure how many articles I have written with regard to wheelchair accessibility. I’m certainly not going to start counting now, as it would take me until the middle of next year to look through it all. However, the first stirrings within the taxi and private hire side of the Equality Act arrived from the Government this week. You will find them on pages 11 and 12. The first section is Guidance Notes about the Equality Act for local authorities, and at the same time, Guidance Notes for taxi and PHV drivers. We print both of these documents in full.
They are very helpful in suggesting ways to go, but I am devastated once again to be able to advise all readers that the “IF” factor once more hits me right between the eyes, and as I see it, will cause a lot of problems and huge yawning gaps in the functionality of this new legislation.
Let me explain: If you are a hackney carriage or private hire driver who has a wheelchair accessible vehicle, you will have a duty put upon you to provide phys- ical assistance to passengers in wheelchairs. An announcement will be made on when the duties will come into force, but it won’t be before April 2011. These duties will apply to those drivers who drive any wheelchair accessible taxi or PHV which is on the licensing authority’s list of designated vehicles. That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Except section 167 of the Equality Act states – and watch this very carefully – that a local authority may keep a list of these vehicles. It doesn’t have to – it may. We are currently doing a survey of wheelchair accessible private hire vehicles in the country. We have had 209 responses so far; of those 209 councils, 36 of them tell us they don’t keep any records of the number of private hire WAVs. What effect will this have? Well – and if you’re not laughing by now, please sit down because this one will really get you – the Guidance Notes say “What if my licensing authority does not intend to keep a list of designated vehicles?” And the answer is: “If a licensing authority does not intend to maintain a list of designat- ed vehicles, then the duties will not apply. The duties only apply to drivers of vehicles which are on the licensing authority’s list.” So this will mean that all WAV hackney carriage drivers might have their vehicles on the list; the councils do know how many wheelchair accessible hackneys there are out there, so it may be relatively easy for them to produce such a list.
But as we’ve said, 17.2 per cent of those councils who have replied to our survey so far do not keep a list of wheelchair accessible PHVs in their district. So the hackney carriage drivers can commit offences and be prosecuted for committing those offences, but the private hire drivers cannot.
The amazing thing is that of those councils that do keep records of their private hire WAVs, 42 of the 209, or 20.1 per cent, of the councils that have responded so far have more private hire wheelchair accessible vehicles than they do hack- ney WAVs. In fact, in seven of those councils over 40 per cent of the private hire fleet is wheelchair accessible. Oh and by the way, if you are in Scotland it does- n’t apply to you anyway. But it does in Wales.
Oh and by the way again, if you are unfit with a back condition or some other medical condition which would make it unsafe for you to comply with pushing passengers in wheelchairs up ramps, you can apply for an exemption and the Department for Transport will be issuing stickers to local authorities so that you can put those in your windscreen to show that you are exempt. So I hope you’ve got that clearly out there... if you’re unfit, the duties don’t apply to you. If you’re fit and live in Scotland, the duties don’t apply to you. And if you’re fit but your vehicle is not on the list, the duties don’t apply to you. Once again, insanity rules; and once again we sit back with expectant glee to see where we will go to next. We had 15 years of “perhaps” and “maybe” under the DDA; we now start the Equality Act with “confuzzled?”, or “Eh-specific?”. As a final hoot, the driver guidance suggests that if you are the driver of a WAV, the first thing you have to do is to establish whether your licensing officer intends to keep a list or not. So the duties for looking after the disabled passenger are firmly placed in the drivers’ laps. Alternatively, in introducing the new legislation, perhaps someone will see the sense in changing the word “may” to “will” pertaining to councils maintaining the lists. But if this does not happen, I sincerely hope that the message contained in this article is considered in the light of common sense, duty of care, and the implied - but apparently not mandated for - word “equality”. I’m sorry... I have not laughed this much since the new CRB form hit the streets; and before that, the Dillennium Moan. I’m laughing so much that I can hardly bear to say – Until next time, sayonara.
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PAGE 10
PHTM OCTOBER 2010
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