UNMET DEMAND SURVEY REPLACEMENT WAVs
Like most local authorities that maintain hackney carriage numbers a UDS is required every three years. Brighton & Hove council has had a ‘Managed Growth’ policy for a number of years, issuing five plates per year on the condition that these are WAVs. Although a change a couple of years ago also gave the option that an electric plug-in or hybrid plug-in can be brought on instead.
There is a waiting list in place and each year these new licences are usually eagerly taken up from drivers that have been in the trade for a few years who don’t own their own cabs. However, this has now changed with those on the waiting list passing the opportunity to accept a new licence.
This is unprecedented and just goes to show the lack of confidence there is to earn enough money with the requirements to invest in a WAV or electric plug-in hybrid. Yes, we all know the alleged savings for an electric car but there are far too many reasons not to have one as a cab which I won’t go into here.
That lack of interest in taking up a newly issued hackney carriage licence is not only applicable to where we are today with such uncertainty but also with the council’s drive to go ‘Carbon Neutral’ by 2030. And we have no doubt that it will be dropped onto us that diesels will no longer be licensed by the council prior to that date.
However, a sneak insight of the UDS has shown that there is an upscaled demand at the two main city centre ranks on Saturday nights. This fits in very well with the drop in the number of driver licences because these drivers are needed to drive the existing hackney fleet.
It must also be minded that two busy nights do not necessarily pay off a mortgage, both on a house and on a super-duper electric cab.
I do have to add though that I think it takes a brave cab driver to pick up from these city centre ranks, which are full of rowdy youngsters, even though we now have Marshals in place.
I have to say that my days of working these ranks in those silly hours are way gone!
PHTM OCTOBER 2022
There is also another point on the UDS where not only the cost but the availability of replacement WAVs is a hot subject. Currently our age limit for all vehicles is seven years at first licence, with a maximum of ten years and then an extra two years under an ‘Exceptional Condition’ with two compliance tests per year.
There is of course the argument that the age of the vehicle should not be the absolute factor in its suitability, and most diesels vehicles manufactured after 2015 are Euro 6 compliant.
Based on this difficulty of finding suitable replacement WAVs for existing licence holders, as a Trade Group we have persistently made an argument that the council needs to have a serious look at the age limits on WAVs before we have those proprietors handing these licences back.
We have now been told this is on the Agenda for the next Trade Forum meeting in early October, although at the time of writing this, no details have been released. We are hoping that this is good news for those WAV proprietors with an extension to the current age limit.
One thing for sure in this trade is that there has hardly been any time in the forty years that I have been in it that there has ever been a reasonable period of stability - and I don’t believe that there ever will be. And time will tell if the adjustment to the local Knowledge Test to encourage others to be become locally licensed and to not a get a ‘soft licence’ elsewhere to work here, will make any difference…
God Save the King… but also please keep in mind the locally licensed cab drivers!
Andy Peters Brighton & Hove Cab Trade Association
info@bhcta.co.uk www.bhcta.co.uk
facebook.com/groups/bhcabta @cabsbrighton
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