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PostPosted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:25 pm 
Heres a link to a few legal framework points apertaining to our trade. I wonder if anyone can spot the inacurracies? lol

I don't know if the Wathan v Neath and port Talbot case has been discussed in the past, I suspect it has. However, If anyone has a link to the actual transcript it would be apreciated.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:bg ... NCIL&hl=en

Best wishes

John Davies


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 1:29 pm 
This is the first Annex of the OFT's report.

This is presumably Jim Button's work, so surely there can't be any innacurracies :)

The original document can be found at:

http://www.oft.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/7875 ... nnexeA.pdf


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 1:40 pm 
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Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2003 6:09 pm
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Location: Miles away from paradise, not far from hell.
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2

Friday, 12th July 2002

B e f o r e:
SIR EDWIN JOWITT
- - - - - - -
WATHAN
-v-
NEATH & PORT TALBOT COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL


MR PETER MADDOX (instructed by Kearns & Co Sols, Sun Alliance House, 166/167 St Helen's Road, Swansea SA1 4DQ) appeared on behalf of the Claimant

MR PAUL THOMAS (instructed by Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, Director of Finance & Corporate Services, Head of Legal Services, Port Talbot SA13 IRJ) appeared on behalf of the Defendant

- - - - - - -
J U D G M E N T
(As approved by the Court)
- - - - - - -
Friday, 12th July 2002

1. SIR EDWIN JOWITT: This is an appeal by way of case stated from the justices in the county of West Glamorgan acting in the petty sessional division of Neath Port Talbot. The appellant was a licensed hackney carriage driver. He had renewed his licence but then the District Council suspended it because it was said, that in breach of condition 27 of the Neath Port Talbot licensing conditions for hackney charge and private hire drivers, he had not notified the District Council within the seven days provided of certain convictions.

2. There was an appeal against that, to the Magistrates' Court. It was said on behalf of the appellant that the conditions upon which the District Council relied were invalid because they had no power to make such conditions in relation to the drivers of hackney carriages. For the respondent in this appeal, it was urged upon the magistrates that the case was covered by section 57 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. Subsection (1) reads in this way:
“A district council may require any applicant for a licence under the Act of 1847 or under this Part of this Act to submit to them such information as they may reasonably consider necessary to enable them to determine whether the licence should be granted and whether conditions should be attached to any such licence.”

3. I need not go through the remaining subsections which all relate, save for subsection (3), to the kind of information which may be required. Subsection (3) makes it a criminal offence knowingly or recklessly to make a false statement or omit any material particulars in providing information under the section.

4. What has been said and what has been urged upon me today by Mr Thomas, for the defendant, is that section 57(1) not only provides the power to require information to be given, it also provides the power to issue licences both for hackney carriages and for private hire vehicles and to impose conditions upon their grant. I am bound to say that is not the natural way one would read that subsection. But his difficulty is made the greater when one bears in mind that the earlier sections to which it is sufficient for me to refer without going through them in any detail.

5. The Act distinguishes between the operator of a vehicle, the driver of the vehicle and the vehicle itself. Section 55 of the 1976 Act empowers the District Council to issue a licence to the operator of a private hire vehicle and to impose conditions upon that licence. Section 51 makes similar provision in the case of a driver of a private hire vehicle, and section 48 contains the power to grant licences in respect of the private hire vehicle itself and to impose conditions in respect of it.

6. So, if Mr Thomas is right, one has in section 57 the creation of a power to grant licences and also to impose conditions upon the grant of those licences, whereas, in the preceding sections, that has already been dealt with by the sections to which I have referred. This, in my judgment, reinforces my reading of section 57: that it simply provides additional power to the District Council when it comes to decide whether to grant a licence and, where, it is empowered to impose conditions, whether to impose conditions. That is why section 57 comes in the place in this part of the Act which it does, after the sections which deal with the issue of licences and attaching conditions to them.

7. Mr Thomas realistically accepts that one has to give the same meaning to section 57 whether one is seeking to apply it to a hackney carriage or to a private hire car. That really should be sufficient to dispose of this argument. The magistrates were wrong when they considered that section 57 gave the powers that it does, and the submission to them that it did that was also wrong. But in deference to Mr Thomas's submissions I will deal with one or two further matters. I accept this is in some ways a curious piece of legislation. One has to go back to the Town Police Clauses Act 1847 to understand why I say that. This Act deals with the issue of a licence to a driver of a hackney carriage and the issue of a licence which is issued to the proprietor in respect of a particular hackney carriage. It follows that the distinction in relation to private hire vehicles that can be found in the 1976 Act between operator, driver and vehicle is not quite the same as that in the Act of 1847.

8. The power to control activities with hackney carriages under the 1847 Act is to be found in section 68. That enables byelaws to be passed by, nowadays, the District Council regulating among other matters the conduct of the proprietors and drivers of hackney carriages, the manner in which the number of each carriage corresponding with the number of its licence should be displayed, and the number of persons to be carried by such hackney carriages. I need go into no more detail in relation to that provision save for this, that it deals also with how such hackney carriages are to be furnished or provided; and then it deals with the fixing of hackney carriages and the stands for hackney carriages, and the fares and the safe custody and redelivery of property accidentally left in hackney carriages.

9. That power to make byelaws has been preserved by the Public Health Act 1878, section 171, as amended by the Local Government Act 1972, section 180(1)(a). A power which was vested formally in commissions now vests in the District Council, and that power has been preserved and not amended by the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. The only addition to be found in the 1976 Act in relation to the control by way of imposing conditions on the operation of hackney carriages is to be found in section 47, which allows conditions to be imposed by the District Council when it issues a licence for the vehicle itself. It is not difficult to understand why such a section was included in the 1976 Act, despite the provision for making byelaws in section 68 of the 1847 Act. Going back to part of section 68, which I did not read in full and do so now; the byelaws can regulate
“...the number of persons to be carried by such hackney carriages, and in what manner such number is to be shown on such carriage, and what number of horses or other animals is to draw the same, and the placing of check strings to the carriages, and the holding of the same by the driver, and how such hackney carriages are to be furnished or provided.”

10. It is easy to see that, with the modern motor vehicle, that would not be a very useful power, and hence one can see why there is the more general provision in section 47 to allow conditions to be imposed in relation to the licence for the hackney carriage itself.

11. One further matter which Mr Thomas urged upon me was in relation to section 51 and 52 of the 1976 Act. Section 51 relates to the issue of a licence to drive a private hire vehicle. Subsection (2) allows the District Council to attach to the grant of such a licence such conditions as they may consider reasonably necessary. One comes then to section 52 which provides:
“Any person aggrieved by-
(1) the refusal of the district council to grant a driver's licence under section 51 of this Act;”

12. So far there is no problem in understanding what is meant, but the subsection goes on:
“or
(2) any conditions attached to the grant of a driver's licence may appeal to a magistrates' court.”

13. Mr Thomas reminds me of the interpretation section, section 80, in which this definition of “driver's licence” is given:
“'Driver's licence' means, in relation to the driver of a hackney carriage, a licence under section 46 of the Act of 1847 and, in relation to the driver of a private hire vehicle, a licence under section 51 of this Act.”

14. Mr Thomas submits, if one comes back to subsection (2) of section 52, the reference there to a driver's licence is to both a driver's licence for a private hire vehicle and for a hackney carriage. So, he submits, there must be a power to impose conditions upon the grant of a licence to the driver of a hackney carriage. He asks then: where is that power to impose conditions to be found? Nowhere, he submits, except in section 57. This, he argues, supports the construction he would have me place on section 57.

15. I confess that, reading section 52 as one whole, the driver's licence referred to in subsection 2 is quite plainly a driver's licence referred to in subsection (1), that is, a driver's licence for a private hire vehicle. Mr Thomas's submission that the meaning is other than that ignores the opening words of section 80(1):
“In this Part of the Act, unless the subject or context otherwise requires-“

16. Quite plainly the subject or the context in relation to subsection (2) does otherwise require, and the reference there to the driver's licence has to be given the restricted meaning that one finds in subsection (1).

17. I come back to the definition of “driver's licence” in section 80 because it defines it in relation to the driver of a hackney carriage as a licence issued under section 46 of the Act of 1847 and, in relation to the driver of a private hire vehicle, a licence under section 51 of the 1976 Act. That seems to me to be quite inconsistent with Mr Thomas's submission that there is a power to issue a licence both for a hackney carriage driver and for a private car hire driver under section 57; and it reinforces my reading of section 57 as simply being a section after those earlier sections which deal with the issue of licences and the imposing of conditions upon them to facilitate that exercise, so that the issuer of the licence can be properly informed when he issues the licence. That is so whether the licence is issued under the 1976 Act or the Act of 1847.

18. Finally, Mr Thomas urges upon me that this reading of section 57, and, he would add, the reading of section 52(2), creates an anomalous situation. So far as conditions imposed in the case of a private hire vehicle are concerned, there is an appeal to the magistrates.

19. With regard to a proprietor's licence and a driver's licence relating to a hackney carriage, there is no appeal, because the way in which conditions have to be imposed there are by means of byelaws which cannot be challenged by way of appeal, but only by way of judicial review. I accept it seems strange that those two licences should be dealt with in different ways from the three kinds of licences issued in respect of a private hire vehicle. That does not allow me to give section 57 other than what I regard as its very plain meaning. One might say that the anomaly is the more curious in that one now has section 47, which relates to the imposing of conditions upon the grant of a licence for a hackney carriage. The licences were granted under the Act of 1847, and there remain the powers, for what they are worth under section 68, to make byelaws about the state of a hackney carriage, but, as I have said already, they are an impractical tool for controlling the design and quality of the modern hackney carriage; hence we have section 47.

20. But, I repeat, although anomalies sometime occur in statutes, that does not allow the court to ignore the plain wording of the section and substitute some variation which seeks to remove the anomaly. Where there is an ambiguity that may be possible, but there is no ambiguity here. I turn then to the question which magistrates posed in their case. In paragraph 7 of the case stated, the questions are these:
“(i) Whether the Magistrates were correct in law in finding that S57(1) Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 empowers the Respondent to attach Conditions to the Appellant's Hackney Carriage Driver Licence thereby purporting to regulate the conduct of the Appellant in his role as a hackney Carriage Driver especially in the circumstances where no information was obtained by the Respondent to justify the Condition prior to the Licence having been issued.”

21. I ignore for the moment the words which follow “especially in the circumstances” and answer the question no, and merely add that that answer is not affected by those words which I have just ignored.

22. The second question:
“(ii) Whether the Magistrates were correct in law in finding that Condition 27 of the Respondent's Conditions of Licence is enforceable as against the Appellant in this case.”

23. Again, the answer to that is no. There are no powers under section 57 to make conditions which attach to the licence of a driver of a hackney carriage and the District Council has not issued any byelaws, which is what has given rise to the difficulty in this case.

24. The third and final question:
“Whether the conduct of a Hackney Carriage Driver (if to be regulated) should in law be regulated by way of Byelaws approved by the Secretary of State for Transport in accordance with S68 Town Police Clauses Act 1847.”

25. I have not been addressed upon the particular method by which byelaws under section 68 have to be promulgated and brought into effect by the District Council, but I merely say that any regulation of a hackney carriage driver has to be covered by such byelaws and, however it is that they have to be brought into force. The result is that this appeal is allowed.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 7:58 pm 
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Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2003 7:25 pm
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Location: Wayneistan
I think this case needs a bump.

CC

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 6:02 am 
Wow 6 year bump. Good case though.


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