OUT OF TOWN DRIVERS YORK LICENSING COMMITTEE WRITE TO SECRETARY OF
Senior Licensing Committee Members, Councillors Rachel Melly and Keith Orrell, have written to the Government on behalf of City of York Council seeking long overdue national reform of taxi and private hire licensing law.
Cllr Rachel Melly is Labour spokesperson for Transport, Vice Chair of the council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee and a co-signatory of the letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps MP. She says the law is outdated, creating incentives for York-based operators to get licensed in other areas with lower standards.
Taxi Licensing powers exist for the benefit of public safety, but current law means that “out of town” taxis, which do not hold operators licences in the York Authority Area are operating without passing local safety checks or knowledge tests. Local hackney carriage and private hire drivers are proud to meet the high standards and provide a good service, but are being undermined by operators outside of the Local Authority’s control.
Urgent reform is needed.
Cllr Melly comments: “Operators licensed elsewhere in the region and who have drivers operating for significant periods in York is one problem, and York-based operators who are circumventing York’s rigorous safeguarding and knowledge test by getting licensed in Wolverhampton is another.
“In both cases we have drivers operating in York either to lower standards or without sufficient knowledge of our city to offer a proper service. The whole purpose of taxi licensing is to ensure the public’s safety, yet in both cases public safety is being compromised by perverse incentives within the current regulatory regime.
“It’s a mess and something that continues to cause significant problems both for public safety and for the livelihoods of York licensed drivers who rightly meet York’s high standards”.
“Problems with the current system are obvious,” adds Cllr Melly.
“The law is outdated and ambiguous. Different solicitors have different interpretations. Councillors recognise and acknowledge the problems this is causing in York, and we want the Government to act so that public confidence can be restored when someone chooses to get a taxi. At the moment enforcement action is difficult and many of the reported incidents we are seeing in York are unfairly tarnishing the vast majority of properly trained and licensed York-based drivers”.
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Dear Secretary of State RE: Taxi licensing reform
City of York Council has written to the Secretary of State for Transport on several occasions urging the Secretary in post to introduce taxi licensing reform as a matter of urgency.
Outdated legislation, which is open to interpretation, has led to debate in York between the Council and the licensed trade, who have both received differing legal opinion from Counsel.
The purpose of licensing hackney carriage and private hire vehicles, drivers and operators is public safety. The Council welcomes the introduction of the Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards, which will hopefully mean that all licensing authorities have or are working towards implementing the Standards. The Standards do not, however, address matters such as a minimum standard for licensed vehicles or matters relating to cross border work. The Council also supports the Taxi and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill, which has recently had its second reading and is now going to a Public Bill Committee.
As stated in previous letters, taxi licensing reform has become more pressing as York has seen a major increase in private hire vehicles from other local authority areas operating in the city. Operators, not licensed by York, who take bookings via an ‘App’ encourage drivers (some- times offering incentives) to travel 30-40 miles from their home authority area to come to York in the hope of getting bookings. Some of these drivers never work in their home authority area; they travel to York most days.
We have been inundated with complaints about taxis in recent years, particularly about the driving standards of those from other authority areas. This includes illegal turns, parking on designated taxi ranks and driving the wrong way on one way streets. As we do not license the vehicles we cannot deal with the complaints as they have to be referred to the licensed drivers/vehicles home authority.
Corporate Director of Place: Neil Ferris Working with our colleagues across the West Yorkshire transport authority area we have carried out a considerable amount of work aligning our policies on driver training and suitability where possible, and we also
OCTOBER 2021
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