A LICENSING OFFICER’S VIEW
THE COST - A RACE TO THE BOTTOM OR NATIONAL MONOPOLY?
several pages reporting on those bad apples? How many professions require a regulator which must have detailed policies on assessing convictions? Until such people do not exist a licensing duty will remain.
Licensing requires an assessment of all the possible risks, even those that are very remote. Individuals such as John Worboys, Wayne Couzens and Jimmy Saville prove that there a small number of people who go to great lengths to be in positions of power to cause harm. There is an increased risk that such individuals will be attracted to the potential of working in a position of power under the radar miles away from where they are licensed.
The irresponsible in the trade may work without insurance or whilst their vehicle is severely damaged or let an unlicensed driver log into their PDA and use their vehicle for work. These activities are more likely to be identified by local regulation. Innocent drivers can find themselves used by County line gangs, conveying victims of CSE and human trafficking or other contraband.
Officers from a variety of agencies work locally together and share intelligence - the issues in Rotherham and Rochdale prove that is not always successful but it’s even harder if the one regulatory body that has relevant knowledge is miles away.
The public must have faith in the regulatory system in order to have faith in the PHV industry. Those regulating must therefore be as fit and proper as the drivers they license.
It is difficult to understand how any council, if addressing its mind to the public safety obligation imposed on it by the 1976 Act, could conclude that the public hundreds of miles away is at no increased risk in a PHV licensed by that council - or that the risk is so small that it is worth subjecting people to it.
PHTM OCTOBER 2022
Councils have to enforce the licensing regime – the cost of which is derived from licence fees. All of the enforcement cost is levied on the local licence holders - even if 50% of the vehicles in that area are licensed by another authority. Local licence holders can see their fees increase whilst those licensed elsewhere benefit from reduced fees (as their authority is not doing the local enforcement in relation to the vehicles it allows in the other authority area). Local licensees end up subsidising the out of towners until they too decide to go shopping. The enforcement cost is then spread across even fewer local licence holders and a vicious cycle continues.
Council’s either lower their standards to retain drivers and maintain local control or end up being unable to provide the service at all (South Staffordshire has already handed its licensing responsibility over to Wolverhampton). This leads us down a road of low standards with increasing risk or to an unofficial national system administered by one council or a small number of regional monopolies.
CONCLUSION
The current system is not working. We need fit for purpose regulators to have a fit and proper trade.
Authorities encouraging licence shopping are acting in conflict with Parliament’s intention of a local regulatory system, it is irresponsible, undemocratic and contrary to their public duty. It forces regulators into commercial competition with each other in which safety standards will drop further and further until the public no longer has any trust in the regulatory system or one authority remains with a monopoly.
Licensing PHV drivers in large numbers knowing that they will work hundreds of miles away increases the risk to the public. To do this intentionally is a complete failure of a public duty.
In the absence of new legislation we must work together. A partnership between the local council and the local trade can achieve the right ‘local’ standards to protect residents without unnecessary burdens on the trade. But to achieve that, both sides need to understand a little bit more about each other’s point of view.
1Blue Line Taxis (Newcastle) Limited Appellant and The Council of the City of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
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