Importance of rules to ease taxi tensionTENSIONS between taxi drivers and private hire operators are not unknown and to some the arguments may seem little more than an unseemly turf war.
To be clear, a taxi (or Hackney carriage) driver has a licence from the local authority to pick up anyone who hails them in the street. Private hire vehicles do not. Their licences allow them to carry only people who have booked them beforehand.
Nottingham's taxi drivers – who are easily identified by the green, London-style Hackney carriage cabs they must drive – have long complained that private hire operators poach their customers by hanging round places where people are likely to gather.
Recently, the tensions between the two types of operator boiled over into an unseemly confrontation at the Queen's Medical Centre.
Whatever the rights or wrongs, this is a step too far. For these simmering tensions to have reached the stage where police had to intervene suggests that the licensing authority, too, needs to robustly remind both sides where the limits lie.
Those rules may change in the future. The fact that the Law Commission is currently examining them reinforces the view that they may need to be modified.
But the current rules are the rules. They need to be observed and enforced.
http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Post- ... story.html
Login
Register
FAQ
