Taxi Driver Online

I run a PH company in the South East & we have had a new licensing officer around 9 months ago. I seem to be having more & more problems with him.
I would appreciate any pointers with regard to the following.

1) 3 times last year 3 knowledge tests of drivers who had stated they were coming to work for us were incorrectly marked by the officer, this was only discovered when the 3rd person questioned getting 0/40, at this point we told the other 2 failures to get their papers re-checked which they did, all 3 passed. This lost them up to 2 months earnings each.

2) Another driver took his test last week & failed with 27/40. He asked for a copy of his marked papers on my advice so he could see where he went wrong & learn & also so we can be satisfied the papers were marked correctly.
The licensing officer refused.

3) Every PH & Hackney Vehicle has to be inspected & plated at only one place, the Councils own garage, this is a monopoly, they over charge, recently put the charge up by £5 (in these economic times) & because they do all of the taxis it is frequently difficult to get a car booked in for a re-test within the two week limit. Monopoly?

4) In our area, PH Vehicles must be registered 7 years or newer. Once registered they can go on for a unspecified time provided they remain clean, tidy & smart, no dents, scratches etc.
I own 12 vehicles which are rented out to drivers, on three of these, when they have gone for their MOT they have failed & a list of the failures was provided. We have the work done, re-tested & passed.
However our licensing officer is now saying that as they had a list of repairs that needed doing she will not allow them to be re-plated as these are dangerous vehicles, despite passing the mechanical test?

5) A Romanian driver I brought over here via EU Taxis took 6 months to get his badge when it should have been two.
A) His application was first refused because he did not have a valid UK license but he did have a EU license. This wasted time & from what I understand a EU license is valid in this country for PH work?
B) His application was then refused because he did not have a valid UK national insurance number, eventually the officer was made to know he didn’t have to provide one.
C) His references which were of course from his home country were refused.
D) His medical which was taken approx 1 week before he came to England was not allowed & he had to have another one done here.
This application was delayed & delayed.

6) Restricted license. We can gain a restricted license which involves everything else to become a PH driver other than the knowledge test & with this license only jobs of 40 miles or over can be done.
My partner / mechanic who services / repairs our 9 cars that we rent out is unable to drive any of these vehicles as he does not have a PH license. (We have fleet insurance) He’s 62, doesn’t have any interest in becoming a taxi driver & would find it very hard to learn the knowledge. A restricted license exists & sounds ideal as he can then drive the vehicles legally & could cover the occasional airport run.
At the moment he can’t test drive any vehicles & we have to get drivers in to test drive / run them to mot tests / garages / pick up breakdowns etc.
We have been refused a restricted license as the licensing officer does not believe it will be used for what it is intended for.

Appreciate any views on any of the above.

yeah stop mugging immigrants off with tales of gold and renting them sheds for roller money.

Stop bringing Immigrant's in to do your work, I agree with the licensing officers decision, his CRB is about as much use as toilet paper, his driving licence will no doubt be a forged one.

No wonder this country is on it's @rse with companies like yours.

The council must have a formal complaints procedure, you need to start making formal complaints.

All the issues you have outlined should be properly investigated by the council, and if they don't then you need to contact the Local Government Ombudsman.

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IDFIMH

what?....

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

The OP wants too much his way, id say he has no axe to grind and is - in fact - in a fairly liberal LA...

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

Interesting view wannabeehack, I don't think I'm being unreasonable.

If it was one or two of my original problems then yes, but it's far more than that, it's affecting my business, it could affect my staff, & a lot of it comes over to me, at least, as buaracratic pettiness, which I have issues with in our country.

As far as the maintenace of the cars go, if a driver reports any issue we look at it & resolve it generally within 24 hrs, we service the cars every 4 - 6 weeks but we're not a proffesional garage & I feel we give more care to our cars than the majority of the private hire drivers who own their vehicles.


Whatever you think we are all part of the EU, their are meant to be laws to allow people to work in each others country & this driver is polite, smart, does any job given & I wish a few more of the local drivers would act this way.

And no doubt he's as cheap as chips too.

You may not realise it, but people like you are one of the reasons we may not be part of the EU much longer. That will kind of mess up your business strategy.
BTW, if you hire this guy a car, that makes him self employed. Any problems he has with the council are therefore his problems, not yours.

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

Nope, he's self employed like any other driver, does his work, takes his own money.

I do agree with you on where you are coming from re foreign imports, but I need to grow my circuit & trying to get decent hard working english folk who wanna become cab drivers is quite hard. It was an experiment, which apart from the getting him licensed issues, has worked very well.
We have had several customer compliments re this guys helpful & friendly attitude.

And the problems were with him getting his license which were my problems as I was sponsoring him.

sorry to take issue with your view on maintenance, if the car fails the MoT with a list of defects, it isn't being maintained! the MoT should NOT be used as a routine safety check to find out what wants doing!

Whatever you think we are all part of the EU, their are meant to be laws to allow people to work in each others country & this driver is polite, smart, does any job given & I wish a few more of the local drivers would act this way.[/quote]
Then the sooner we come out of it the better! As Wannabe says VOTE UKIP!!
Also what Roythebus says about cars failing the test also applies down here, if it fails on many things the council will probably want a word.

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42 years now! and still going strong!

How about this? A lot of car for 10K!! My new PH!

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42 years now! and still going strong!

Sorry chaps, should have put this on a different thread! Never mind!

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42 years now! and still going strong!

Don't I know it. I recently bought a Vauxhall Vivaro with a few faults that I asked the garage to fix BEFORE testing it. No, they had to test it and log all the faults first. The council thought that I was presenting a right heap of [edited by admin] and wanted to look at it themselves before plating it.

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Grandad,