Taxi Driver Online

Taxi drivers organise town centre protest

A convoy of hackney cabs will be descending on a taxi rank in Northampton town centre in protest against private hire drivers who illegally tout for business.

The demonstration comes on the back of a petition signed by 110 drivers that calls for police and Northampton Borough Council to take action against private hire cars who are not licensed or insured to pick up fares in the street.

Marc Blundred, who represents the hackney carriage drivers in Northampton, said: "There's a massive amount of private hire cars who are actively touting for business in the town centre area.

"We've tried to approach them and move them on but they're not having any of it.

"It's for the public safety, and we have the facility to serve the public but we're losing business because of these people," he added.

The protest is at All Saints Church in Northampton on Saturday, June 20.

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IDFIMH

Good on local Taxi trade.

Nice to see it's not just London who has an influx of these theiving t***s.

I was approached today by some drivers who have said that as the local L.O. have suggested training 12 Special Constables... Should we suspend the demonstration!!

What a bunch of pussies...

In reality, it's far more probable that they've realised it's Silversone weekend and think they'll be missing out on a few quid.

I've explained that in a meeting with the L.O. and local P.C. Inspector, I was told that they would offer no extra dedicated resource as this is simply not a priority to them and so not within the confines of their budget.

Of the 12 Specials, only a few will be working at any one time and then under the direct observation of a regular P.C. and they're already aware of the law and stand less than 2 metres away from offenders.

Despite this being:

Driving without insurance
&
Fraud

Apparently, it's condonable by Northamptonshire Police.

We regularly have over 20 and on occasion as many as 40 P.H. cars, blatently touting within 50 metres of the full Hackney rank.

As such, as far as I'm aware, the demonstration is still on for Saturday 20th June 2009 at 15h00..

I'll update you of the results.. maybe get something more national going.. I'm guessing we're not the only ones suffering with this issue.

Petition@BlackCab.org.uk

Why don't 10 or so Taxi drivers sign up as Special Constables, then you can Police the situation yourselves.

If a few gave up the odd Friday or Saturday night, the problem may solve itself within the year.

Special constables are not allowed to act independantly they are always paired with a full time PC AND if the duty seargeant says catching touting PH's is NOT a priority then it won't make a blind bit of differance whether the special is a cabbie or not ! They have to police what they are told to not what they want to

Special Constables can and do patrol independently, in fact they even have their own rank structure.

In London, Specials can be attached to specialist units such as Traffic or Heathrow and even the Cab trades 'very own' Transport Occupational Command Unit.

I suggested this over on the Vigilante forum, as TOCU will won't be given any more resources than it already has, we could fill some vacancies and even it was only a couple of hundred out of 26000 taxi Drivers, just think of the difference that would make to the touting problem.
Alas no one was interested.

They have the same privileges and powers of arrest as a regular.

Whether some of them could be trusted with those powers is another debate altogether.

be far better to order 10 hiviz jackets with "LICENSING" printed on the back and have some unemployed towalk up and down the streets....

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

I think Mr TF might be interested.

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IDFIMH

Nah its far too sensible a suggestion for TF he loves to pursue illogical and unworkable ideas

I cannot imagine the specials in pink shell suits