Taxi Driver Online

OK, so rates for school runs have ballooned, but this makes it sound like there's some dodgy stuff going on, or at least that's the subtext. But just sounds like the way things have always worked, but at higher rates

(It doesn't specifically say here, but I'm sure the chap quoted used to run some sort of despatch operation in the town.)


Herefordshire taxis 'charging double' for council contracts

https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/2502 ... contracts/

Taxis drivers in Herefordshire are making so much money taking children to and from school that they don’t need to bother taking other fares, particularly at night.

This is the view of John Jones, for many years the chairman of Hereford Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Association, responding to the news that Herefordshire Council spent nearly £6 million on such contracts in the last financial year.

“It used to be that if you took on these regular contracts, they would be at below meter rate,” he said – but now such contracts let by the council are often at double the equivalent rate on the meter.

He put the change down to supply and demand, with the county’s onerous requirements on drivers and their vehicles, coupled with lingering effects of Covid 19, leaving not enough taxis to go round – and not all taxis and private hire operators are registered with the council.

“I know of one car that makes a thousand pounds a week going to and from Leominster, when the rate should be less than half that,” Mr Jones said. “A lot of those drivers then take the rest of the day off, and won’t come out at night.”

Some registered operators have taken on extra cars for council contract work, while other “farm out” such contracts to other drivers while taking a cut first, he said, adding that driver positions are being advertised online at £800 a week, “which you won’t earn from regular taxi work”.

“So people Herefordshire are losing out twice over – they are paying over the odds and they can’t get a taxi when they need one,” Mr Jones said.

A Herefordshire Council spokesperson said: “An external review of our home to school transport services is currently under way which will explore commissioning and contracting arrangements.

“The outcomes of this will help to inform the development of any future plans.”

Figures from the council showed that in the financial year to last April, it spent over £5.8 million on taxis for a total of 496 pupils, of whom over half had special educational needs and disabilities.

Well if whatever isn't registered with the council, then it's not a private hire operator

And, of course, while that's an interesting nugget, it isn't examined any further, therefore I'd guess like some of the other stuff something has been lost in the translation, and it's not quite how it sounds


Leominster is about 14 miles form Hereford, according to Google. Maybe he's been taking tips from the operators in Kent

unless it's registered with a different council like say wolverhampton

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

It's certainly the case it refers to 'THE council' rather than 'A council', so reading it very literally it does indeed look like it could be alluding to a cross-border scenario.

And, of course, in view of the length of some of these school trips these day, no doubt there's a lot of cross-border stuff going on even ignoring the more remote licensing scenario represented by the whole Wolverhampton thing.

(On the other hand, Herefordshire is unitary authority, so there's no county council organising school runs across several local council areas, sort of thing...)

But I just kind of got the impression it seemed to be alluding to something other than HCs or PHVs, and to that extent labelling them as such seemed incorrect:


But who knows - probably not worth looking at stuff like that too closely because we all know the way some of these things are reported, so probably better just to brush over them at times rather than spending time trying to interrogate it to the nth degree. Or the old rabbit hole thing

But, again, it's annoying that the article seems to allude to dodgy stuff when in reality it's probably unremarkable in trade terms. But there's very little fleshing out provided, so to an extent it's necessary to read between the lines.

And then waffle on about it on here