So with regard to the taxi with the hugely illegal number plate (not), which would in future entail a suspension hearing etc.
So here's Mr Sex-Pest-Takeway-Owner, with the wee Smart car he used to do deliveries. If it wasn't parked on the rank (because it's full of taxis or other illegally parked cars), then he'd park it just beyond the front of the rank, causing a bit of an obstruction, and on double yellow lines. All night sometimes, and often deliveries were infrequent...
He had a set of properly illegal plates on his car, and not the type of illegality you'd need to be at close quarters to notice (and even then you'd need a reasonable knowledge of the fine details of the rules), but the type visible from 50 yards or so
Don't forget he called himself 'Jack the Lad', and literally had that up in neon lights in the takeaway
(And also lacks the address of the supplier along the bottom etc...)

Don't know why I even bothered, but for some reason at about some time this year I checked his number on the MoT database, and it came up as MoT EXPIRED
It was actually sitting round on the double yellows for about ten weeks with an expired MoT - I checked it every few days
I then noticed that he'd changed the number plates to legal ones. Lo and behold, when I checked the new MoT, he'd failed on illegal registration plates
(Note the gap between the 2023 MoT and and 2024 one.)

Naturally, a wee while after the car was MoTd, he'd swapped the legal plates back to the old illegal ones
After he'd been charged with the sex crimes and a whole list of other stuff, the new owner he sold the business to seemed to dump the 'Jack' plates entirely, and got a set of standard plates (although still without the supplier's address, by the looks of it - the thing that failed on the taxi and made it sound in the press like we're all the worst of the cowboy element).
A few weeks later I thought the car seemed to be making a lot of exhaust noise for a car of that size (999cc, I think)
Had a look back at the MoT, and I originally hadn't clocked that it had a 'major exhaust leak', which meant that the emissions test couldn't even be completed
So presumably that was repaired at the MoT last year, but funny that it seemed to be so noisy a few months later
And, in fact, the exhaust has always looked very odd, both before and after the MoT, because surely it shouldn't be visible like this?

Anyway, the car (and the main driver) seem to have disappeared totally in the last few weeks - from what I can work out the new owner has replaced ALL the staff, and seems to have dumped deliveries too. (Instead now we've got Deliveroo cars parked on the rank instead - they tend to use cars here rather than bikes...which indeed is an interesting shift that occurred over lockdown. Could be wrong, but prior to that I think it was mainly students and younger folks on bikes, but now it seems to be more people in cars, although that's a whole different story, perhaps...)
And, of course, the Smart car wasn't licensed by the council as such, and all he needed was a late-hours takeaway licence.
But do all you reasonably can and you're treated like some sort of hardcore offender
