Taxi Driver Online

A 70-year-old taxi driver who has driven a cab for 17 years said he would be "humiliated" to take a test to prove he can understand English.

South Kesteven District Council in Lincolnshire introduced a rule in May meaning drivers have to prove their language skills when renewing their licences.

Councils regularly have tests for new taxi drivers, but South Kesteven said to be safe and fair the requirement would apply to all applications.

Mr Drake, from Grantham, said it was unnecessary and - if required - the council should pay the additional £46.50 charge for someone sitting the test.

"I’m 70 years old and I’d be really humiliated to be made to take an English language test," said Mr Drake.

"If I can provide a school certificate from 50-odd years ago or whatever, then I won’t have to do the test. But I never even collected them from school.

"I agree, any new driver should take these tests. But every single established driver has to go into the offices for their badge so the council know us.

"It’s creating extra work and stress."

Barry Drake's badge which shows his licence to operate as a taxi driver.

photo on bbc website but shows details which should not be posted on the internet !

Existing drivers need to prove their English skills when they renew their licence

South Kesteven District Council said there had been an online consultation on the new rules before they were introduced.

A spokesperson said to make taxis and private hire cars "safe, efficient and effective", it was important to ensure drivers had a good understanding of the English language.

The authority said it could accept "evidence of a qualification studied in English". This does not incur any fee.

They added: "If the driver does not have evidence of a qualification studied in English then they are required to pass an English Language Skills test. The cost of this one-off test is £46.50.

"From 2021, this test was introduced only for new drivers. Subsequently, in May 2024, in the interests of equality and safety, the council agreed to apply it to all drivers."

Mr Drake said he was making a written complaint to the council’s licensing department.

Not sure if the driver's appearance on GB News helped or hindered his case

So host Patrick Christys was wittering on about 'black cab drivers', but later said it was actually about 'private taxi' drivers - I'd guess someone had corrected him, but obviously it went from bad to worse - presumably the driver is simply a saloon HC driver

Anyway, when Christys made the fairly obvious point (obvious to most of us, at least) that the measure was presumably intended to deal with an influx of, er, drivers with poor English, the driver said that he didn't know about that, because he only worked Fridays and Saturdays, and muttered something about his pension

So whether he genuinely didn't know, or was just not wanting to sound xenophobic, or whatever, I don't know

But I'd guess the latter - even if he's only working a couple of days a week, if he doesn't have a rough idea of the, er, demographic nature of the local trade then his head is obviously up in the clouds. Or whatever.

But I'd guess it's the same as here in Fife - the several press reports and the likes about local 'issues' kind of allude to, er, socio-religous issues and the like, but you have to read between the lines to work it all out

Same with the social media stuff here - dogwhistles aplenty. One recent post about overcharging referred to 'our Dundonian friends'. But that was actually an allusion to a cohort who are anything but what we'd traditionally refer to as Dundonians

Anwyay, this is the video at the appropriate point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg8-Q-J1zSs&t=3095s

In the interview he stated that he did GCSE 55 years ago in those days you would have done O levels or CSE's which were different to modern GCSE

Also it mentioned it is making ALL drivers take the driving profficiency test for which you have to go all the way to Lincoln and the examiner is an "advanced diving" instructer which means you can be failed if you don't know the advanced motoring tecchniques. and that is also £90

So a drivers license is £481.75 for a renewal with all the fees plus £175.00 for the medical plus all the costs of attending tests and collecting and delivering documentation to grotsville