BURY COUNCIL: A MERRY-GO-ROUND
By Donna Short Director NPHTA
www.npha.org.uk
Over the past two months there have been at least three meetings at Bury Council involving discussions about the plight of the local taxi and private hire industry: the Licensing Committee in July, full Council on 11 September, and the latest Taxi Liaison forum on 19 September. Then there were also several meetings held amongst trade members themselves, the latest of which was the week before the Liaison meeting.
The undercurrent of discontent and dissatis- faction amongst licence holders in Bury could not be stronger than it is at the present time; however, unfortunately – despite all these meetings having taken place – it appears that nothing has been resolved. Again.
The issues involve: • limiting taxi and PHV testing to one MoT facility at Bradley Fold;
• treatment of drivers by staff at that testing station;
• complicated complaints procedure put- ting licence holders off complaining;
• non-issuance of an MoT certificate at the testing station;
• uncertainty surrounding the GM plans to unify the licensing regime of all ten GM boroughs;
• potential change of vehicles once a Clean Air policy is determined;
• lack of security/support for drivers as regards the risks they face whilst on duty.
TOO STRICT
Many proprietors are claiming that the com- pliance test is too strict, and that retests are triggered by minor faults. The council coun- ters this by outlining their procedure: a charge of £55 is made for the vehicle test; if three or fewer faults are found with the vehi- cle there is no retest fee. Retests for vehicles with four to ten faults are costed at £25. Drivers are charged the full £55 fee if the vehicle has more than ten faults.
Currently there are 61 HCs and 932 PHVs licensed by Bury Council. Under a FOI request it was revealed that 270 retests took place last year, down from 310 the previous year. The licensing department maintains that too many vehicles are brought to the council test “to find out what is wrong with them”, rather than the proprietor preparing the vehicle to the standard to pass the test.
NPHTA COMMENT:
The reduction in retests can be interpreted as saying that the vehicles in Bury are being
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maintained to a higher standard, which is obviously a good thing. This testing regime is less strict than that of many licensing authorities in the UK; however it is claimed by some trade members that they are charged the full fee for less than ten faults, and that the “advisories” are far too strict. Evidence must be produced of this happen- ing, in writing, with supporting photographs of the faults in question.
This leads on to the complaints procedure: the trade have been informed as to whom they must complain about their treatment at Bradley Fold, but they say their complaints are going nowhere. Again, they’ll have to diarise these complaints in writing, so that there is a ‘paper trail’ (more likely email) of evidence. Also, the council should be issuing an MoT certificate to every vehicle they test – even though their taxi/PHV testing is a taxi compliance test, which exempts them from the MoT – so that the proprietor has the right to a proper avenue of complaint to the DVSA in the event of an injustice having been carried out at Bradley Fold. Currently they are denied that right.
MONOPOLY OF TRADING POSITION
The monopoly of taxi/PHV testing at Bradley Fold has been challenged by the trade repeatedly over the past five years, to no avail. Bury Private Hire Drivers’ Association secretary Mohammad Sajjad told councillors at a public meeting: “This system is not fit for purpose. We paid close to £1.9million last year in licence fees and MoT’s and we are not get- ting the best value for money. There’s one MoT station and they run their own standards. We want another MoT station for our drivers.”
The chair of the Licensing Committee, Cllr Tahir Rafiq, said: “If there is a need and drivers can convince us there is a need, it will be looked at. We are not going to say no, but we can’t just do it because people are saying they want it.”
Angela Lomax, Bury Council’s head of trad- ing standards and licensing, refutes the need for another testing station: “We have a num- ber of reasons we have always had one. We have looked at a peer review against our col- leagues in Greater Manchester and, apart from Bolton, every other [council] just has one. We have less than 1,000 drivers and about 2,500 test appointments available a year. There should be enough tests available for that garage.
“Geographically Bury is quite small. We are one of the smallest authorities in Greater Manchester so we didn’t see there was a need for a second testing station. If there is a need we would have to go through a pro- curement process.”
The council has also consistently maintained that by keeping the compliance testing with- in Bradley Fold, they can be assured of “a consistent high standard”.
NPHTA COMMENT:
The trade is not saying that there are insuf- ficient testing slots at Bradley Fold; rather, it is the treatment of the vehicles and their proprietors that is unfair, and they say that if there was another testing facility, there would be an alternate location to have their vehicles tested, and a fairer degree of com- petition rather than the current monopoly.
To say that the council has always had only one testing station as a rationale for keeping the status quo, and to compare numbers of testing stations within the other Greater Manchester boroughs, is immaterial, as is the size of the borough; it is the ability of the testing facility to deal properly and just- ly with their customers that is the grievance of the trade.
Trouble is, you cannot legislate against atti- tude, although the Conservatives had a good go at trying to do just that at the full Council on 11 September: they vowed to eradicate the “them and us” culture that exists very strongly between the council and the trade, as one of a six-point motion put forward on that date.
In terms of the council demanding a “consis- tent high standard”, surely this could be achieved at any testing facility within the Bury area, with a level of quality control being maintained by regular assessment. Watch that word “within”… it is significant here, because the Bradley Fold station sus- tained major fire damage in February this year, immediately after which the council allocated the council-designated testing sta- tion in Bolton to carry out the testing of all Bury’s licensed vehicles.
Now then: that is somewhat out of order. Under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, section 50(1) states: “… the proprietor of any hackney carriage or of any private hire vehicle licensed by a district council shall present such… vehicle for inspection and testing by or on behalf of the council within such period and at such place within the area of the council as they may by notice reasonably require;…” So why Bolton?
I did raise this point at the Taxi Liaison forum on 19 September – when I could get a word in edgeways – and it was dismissed on the basis that “the testers are all staff from Bradley Fold; they’re merely using the test- ing facility at Bolton out of necessity.” Sorry – the legislation refers to the geographical location of the testing, not the people who
OCTOBER 2019
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