Taxi Driver Online

I was reading yesterday about the labour governments plans to create enlarged single tier "local" government which will effectively abolish the district councils and create large authorities covering either whole counties or large sections of the bigger ones.

Round here they decided to save money by getting rid of local council offices and forcing people to deal online with the council or travel quite substantial distances to the single centralised office. This could mean substantial changes for drivers as many councils such as ours require plates,licenses etc to be collected in person from their premises. Furthermore where these amalgamations have occurred has caused considerable anguish and concerns for local drivers(such as in Northamptonshire) .

If councils like wolverhampton can offer cheaper licensing costs and do a postal licensing system will this drive the trade away from local licensing ?

Will this cause more drivers to travel to bigger towns with more nightlife on a friday and saturday night because of de-zoning ?

Are there any potential positive effects of this ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

We have had a number of mergers between councils, and I'm not sure much has changed regarding the licensing function.

I suspect drivers will have to travel a bit further to get licensed, but we aren't talking 100s of miles.

Busy areas might see a new influx of licensed drivers from the less busy areas, but these drivers could have done that before the mergers.

So to answer the questions you posed, I don't think much will change.

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IDFIMH

Much will change in Lincolnshire if it becomes a unitary authority.

The city of Lincoln council have a WAV only policy ( since 1994, I was there) the others do not.

Where would the licensing office be? Lincoln? They can’t cope with the backlog for the city.

Edders 23 was never happy to have to travel from Stamford to Grantham, so would be ever more unhappy with a journey to Lincoln (75 minutes each way)

Licenses for lincoln are restricted, elsewhere they are not. Would Lincolnshire go 100% wav or would Lincoln be deregulated and de WAV ed, a new word, I know,

Lincolnshire is the second biggest county, and is very urban in the city, very rural in the rest.

A one size fits all policy is going to be interesting. Each of the seven authorities in Lincolnshire has different coloured bins. There are no grammar schools in Lincoln but there are in others. This is being pushed through by Angela rayner, who claims it will reduce waste and costs. It won’t. It won’t anymore than taxing farmers out of existence, vat on public schools or grabbing grannies winter fuel allowance will have a positive effect on tax revenue.

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Former taxi driver

That will have to go, and to be honest I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.

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IDFIMH