The lack of any designated PHV drop-off and pick-up areas only deepens this problem. PHVs provide a door- to-door service that buses simply cannot replicate. Many passengers, particularly the elderly, disabled, or those travelling with shopping or luggage, depend on direct access. Yet your design appears to funnel people into the town centre only by bus or bicycle, while making it harder for those who rely on PHVs. This is counterproductive. The town centre depends on footfall and accessible transport to survive, but these proposals risk starving local businesses of vital income by reducing access for large sections of the community.
This also compounds the wider inequity: hackney carriages licensed outside Hastings are permitted access, but over 300 Hastings-licensed PHVs are excluded. That is penalising the local licensed trade while granting access to operators from other districts, a situation that is neither fair nor defensible. Looking ahead, devolution and deregulation will make this imbalance even more acute. Hastings-licensed PHVs will themselves convert to hackney carriage status, and regionally thousands of additional vehicles could also do the same. The inevitable result is that access will be extended not just to a few hundred, but to many thousands of vehicles across the wider region. To maintain restrictions against Hastings PHVs while opening the door to this outcome is not only inequitable today, it is entirely unsustainable in the very near future.
Taken together, the scheme as it currently stands will not achieve the criteria you say it is designed to meet:
l It will not lower traffic volumes, as displaced journeys will simply be pushed into longer loops elsewhere.
l It will not reduce emissions, as detours inflate carbon output per passenger journey.
l It will not increase safety, as the real risks lie with unregulated delivery vehicles and e-scooters, which your plan does nothing to control.
l It will not create equality of access, as vulnerable passengers remain disadvantaged by PHV restrictions.
l It will not be future-proof, as devolution and deregulation will dismantle the very enforcement mechanism you are relying on.
In short, if delivered as proposed, the plan will ultimately fail to meet the objectives it sets out to achieve. It risks being legally challenged, operationally undermined, and publicly discredited.
PHTM OCTOBER 2025
CRAZY GREEN AGENDA! To summarise:
l Classifying PHVs as “general traffic” is neither accurate nor workable.
l Partial or time-limited access will only create confusion, risk and inequality.
l Excluding PHVs while granting Deliveroo and Uber Eats priority is indefensible.
l The omission of northbound restrictions from stakeholder meetings undermines transparency.
l Devolution and deregulation make your current approach unsustainable and unenforceable.
l Ignoring the accident risks posed by e-bikes and e-scooters while tightening restrictions on licensed PHVs undermines public safety.
l The scheme cannot deliver on its own carbon or net- zero commitments while forcing PHVs into longer detours.
l Allowing outside hackneys access while excluding local Hastings-licensed PHVs is inequitable and open to challenge.
l Denying PHV drop-off and pick-up space reduces access to the town, harms footfall, and risks cutting off the very people the town centre depends on.
I must therefore firmly reiterate: PHV access to Havelock Road and Harold Place must be included within the core scheme. Anything short of this is not equitable, not safe, not environmentally aligned and not future-proof.
Finally, on consultation transparency: you state that feedback will be “recorded and reviewed,” but this does not answer my request. Please confirm:
l How are consultation responses logged? l How are they formally responded to?
lWill my concerns, in full, appear within the official TRO consultation documentation for transparency and accountability?
This confirmation is essential to ensure stakeholder input is not diluted or selectively presented.
Please show your support for fellow cabbies and click the link to sign the petition:
https://forms.office.com/e/Ek9sSAMafA 25 ”
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