"Masters of all they survey"The ReiverIt has been rumoured that me and Casey are in fact one and the same, if this were true, it would be pointless me writing anything in this magazine, it would have already been written. The obvious aside, whilst I do agree with a lot of what he writes, I no longer agree with his belief that locals are best placed to decide. Whist I concur with him that the Law Commission approach is fundamentally flawed, looking upon taxis and private hire with an economic mindset is foolish in the extreme. His belief that locals are best placed to decide anything is a prognosis that has left the countries licensed industry in the current mess.
It can only be with a sense of irony, the Law Commission have taken a stance, at least in respect of taxis, suggesting locals are best placed, just not best placed to decide on taxi numbers. The Law Commission view in respect of private hire seems to be one of keeping locals as far away as possible from everything.
Getting away from the history of why we’re at the current crossroads, and by this I mean the petty pointing of fingers and blaming the various representative bodies (well, just one but let’s not go there), I believe we need to look at various instances of bad governance around the country.
The first example of bad governance is in respect of local authorities some of whom have negligently, and with little forethought, delegated the majority of their powers to licensing departments, thus creating the prospective for abuse. This example will be referred to during this article, as many of the examples are inherently linked to the delegation.
The second example is local authorities who’ve actively abused powers granted to them. Whilst there are numerous examples, the one I choose was brought about for the protection of the public. The Department for Transport (DfT) was responsible for obtaining this particular power for local authorities, the DfT have been disgracefully silent on the abuses. By abuse I do of course refer to the immediate suspension of drivers.
Section 52 of the Road Safety Act 2006 states at 2B;
“If it appears that the interests of public safety require the suspension or revocation of the licence to have immediate effect, and the notice given to the driver under subsection (2)(a) of this section includes a statement that that is so and an explanation why, the suspension or revocation takes effect when the notice is given to the driver.”
Sadly at least one local authority decided the trivial offence of over-ranking should warrant the immediate suspension. It then proceeded to immediately suspend 30 plus drivers for this heinous crime, courtesy of CCTV images. I might add the CCTV images were obtained from cameras installed specifically to prevent street crime, not traffic misdemeanours.
The third example of the summary neglect of councillors and the abuse by licensing departments is obviously the situation that allowed the phenomenon of ‘out of town’ hackney carriages. We are all aware of the area to which I refer without needing to mention the location. Sufficed to state the delegation of power, gave almost unfettered power to a licensing department to tacitly encourage applications from beyond their area of control.
Age limits for vehicles were subsequently abolished or relaxed to pander towards new applicants from outside the area, testing was authorised outside of the licensing area and other regulations were relaxed. This type of neglect, this type of incompetence towards the licensing function is a key reason I believe local authorities should be removed from taxi and private hire legislation.
This neglect wasn’t and isn’t confined to an obscure part of the North East of England, it also now increasing prevalent within the North West courtesy of Rossendale and the Midland’s courtesy of Gelding. There is similar ineptitude elsewhere in the country, please write in and let us compile a list of shame to add to a hackney carriage operating in Manchester licensed courtesy of a council in South Wales. These examples are all in despite of court cases permitting councils to refuse applications from afar.
The forth example of local authority neglect is the pilfering of licensing funds by some local authorities. The licensing function should be self-funding; it shouldn’t make a ‘profit’. Yet we are aware of numerous local authorities where the audit commission are either currently considering or have taken a dim view to what can only be described as the theft of licensing funds to pay for other local authority functions.
The fifth example is rank incompetence, and despite the possibility of a pun, I mean the failure of some local authorities to advertise fare increases correctly. It seems rather trivial, but as I’m sure any of you who have fallen foul of licensing laws were told by a grinning member of the licensing ‘team’, “rules are rules”. Some local authorities have consistently failed to advertise changes in fares in their local paper, thus neglecting to allow the public a chance to either properly scrutinise or object to any tariff alterations. This is just plain incompetence, the 1976 act section 65 paragraph 2 clearly states;
“ When a district council make or vary a table of fares they shall publish in at least one local newspaper circulating in the district a notice setting out the table of fares or the variation thereof and specifying the period, which shall not be less than fourteen days from the date of the first publication of the notice, within which and the manner in which objections to the table of fares or variation can be made.”
It’s not rocket science, it’s a basic thing a council should be doing on an annual basis, yet some can’t even get this right.
The sixth example is the cash for licenses allegations. The BBC recently reported Trafford Council had suspending two licensing officers amidst ‘cash for licenses’ allegations. The police in Manchester subsequently arrested a 51-year-old and a 54-year-old on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. The Trafford examples are actually rare. Not rare because this type of thing doesn’t happen, rare because it is hardly reported. The majority of cases result in enforced ‘gardening leave’. It is seen as better to give a type of ‘offer they cannot refuse’ than for a local authority to face further scrutiny in the guise of the wider, more condemning, public. The trade in numerous areas are similarly aware of garages that are rumoured to accept ‘bungs’ for test passes, these sit well alongside interpreters who have been known to pass knowledge tests and suchlike for applicants.
A seventh example of local authority bad governance is also in respect of testing arrangements, many local authorities still insist on mechanical inspections being carried out ‘in house’. There is little reason for this, after all a test is a test, the local authority should already lay down its required criteria (they do for everything else) and this can and should be part of a decent tendering process. Sadly some local authorities have a protectionist attitude towards their ‘works departments’. Whilst they will outsource virtually every other council function, they believe depriving their works department of the testing of licensed vehicles will deprive them of income. They infrequently see this type of stance as slightly hypocritical when they choose to deregulate taxi numbers; in these cases they cite the ‘free market’.
It must somehow be more difficult to explain free market economics to their employed mechanics – than to explain it to cab drivers.
Another example, this will be the eighth, are those local authorities that have been charging the licensed trade for surveys only to choose to deregulate numbers. There are numerous examples of local authorities charging an additional levy, supposedly put in place to finance demand surveys, these local authorities (and there have been a few of them) subsequently decide to deregulate taxi numbers and as they’ve deregulated numbers they don’t hold the surveys the cab trade have paid for – in the world outside of council offices this is usually described as fraud.
The ninth example of local authority foolishness is the penalty points systems some have dreamed up across the country, surprisingly (or perhaps not) these silly schemes appear to have the support of the Law Commission. As I alluded to above, some local authorities, councillors in particular, have little interest or regard for ‘taxis’ let alone those poor shmucks who drive them. The only possible explanation for penalty point schemes being introduced is that a local authority would rather issue some imaginary penalty points, than to summon a driver to meet with a committee within a few days of the alleged transgression for a trivial offence. The penalty points negate the need to summon a driver to a committee; they can merely accept a few points and then go on their way about their business.
The undoubted laziness or perhaps stupidity of many drivers actually suggests many would accept points without realising that points do tend to accumulate. The points accepted are then forgotten, but not by the licensing department, so when the upper points limit is reached, the driver is forced to acknowledge numerous misdemeanours in front of a committee. Invariably, a local authority will revoke a license faced with a person standing before them with numerous transgressions.
The tenth and final example of local authority failure is their blasé attitude towards providing suitable ranking facilities; sadly this is an area which has been largely ignored by the Law Commission (presumably because they don’t particularly care). Even in regulated areas space for taxi ranks is at a premium, in deregulated areas with taxi numbers uncertain facilities on the whole are pathetic. I am not aware of a single area that has any correlation between taxi numbers and rank spaces. There is no proportionality. Yes, we have local transport plans, but these are basically talking shops where the requirements of the taxi trade go largely ignored, save for platitudes.
The undoubted maxim is the law commission are entrusting their new laws, whatever they may be, with the very same people who have consistently proven to be not only incompetent with existing law, but with people who have consistently been shown to make the law up as they go along. People who are summarily unfit to administer future law and amongst people who are so interested in what they’ve been entrusted with, in many cases they chose to delegate the majority of their function to willing civil servants, some of whom are nothing short of power junkies.
source:
http://www.national-taxi-association.co.uk/?p=3846
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