Taxi Driver Online

when did we start thinking councils had a clue?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

My view is that it's none of the council's business if you use your car for another legitimate purpose. It is what your insurance lets you do that matters. How many food outlets do you know whose delivery drivers break the law by giving shop customers "a lift home" on a regular basis? That is totally illegal and there's been case law on such matters.

PH and courier firms have been around for a long time now. I done some work for such a firm in London back in the 1980s. They would give PH cars parcel delivery jobs over their radio circuit, all quite legal.

If there's nothing in the council's ph/taxi rules that say you can't do something then that is what they have to go by. Your insurance is the best place to ask. My latest private car insurance specifically prohibits me from doing food delivery, parcel and general delivery, use in connection with a trade or business, the carriage of passengers for hire and reward, but I can drive to and from a place of work but not use my car whilst at work. A bit restricitve really but liveable with!

This bit is a bear-trap for anyone whose work has different offices/branches.

In a previous job, we often drove our own cars between offices on standard insurance: social domestic pleasure and commuting. Then someone had a claim refused because driving between workplaces isn't commuting.

The workaround was to add Class 1 business cover, which actually didn't increase the premium by much.

I'd guess that's another potential bear-trap - just because an insurer offers you cover for something, that doesn't mean you're covered if things go belly up, and you need to make a claim and the insurer finds out that you haven't conformed to the council's rules.

Of course, those council rules could be challenged, perhaps via legal action and in the courts if need be, but that's a slightly different issue if you've breached the council rules as they stand.

Nothing directly to do with this thread, but here's a condition from Wolverhampton that I wonder if it could be challenged if anyone somehow felt the need (unlikely, but you never know). And this relates to a discussion in another thread, and I wonder if all local authorities take the same view on this - of course, it's a very odd scenario, but one that's deffo happened before.


And I'd guess different insurers would take different approaches to this kind of thing...

Our application form asks if your vehicle is already licensed by any other authority but i don't know what putting yes would mean.

just found this in the policy.

3.1.2 Dual Plating
The Council will not grant a hackney carriage or private hire vehicle licence for
any vehicle already licensed by another Licensing Authority.

My insurer specifically prohibits my car from being used to go from one place to another while at work. My current work doing rail replacement bus driving sometimes means going to a couple of different sites and sometimes taking another driver with me to take over buses. so I've had to change how things are done. My current compny has just backed all it's TfL bus contracts so another change of direction! Now looking forward to some comp from ACAS as nobody was given notice or consulted. My previous insurer covered use at work but not carrying passengers for hire and reward. The price actually went down when I included business cover!