You can't refuse someone a license because he has an iffy mate. If the chap is fit and proper to drive cabs, how the hell can he be not fit and proper to take bookings?
What did it cost Plymouth Council, oh yeah £250,000.
Taxi bid fails over past link
Councillors have turned down plans to open a new taxi business in premises previously linked to convicted armed robber John Henry Sayers.
An application for a private hire operator's licence for Newcastle Taxis at the Balloon public house car park in Slatyford Lane, Newcastle, was rejected by members of the city council regulatory committee.
The application was from licensed taxi driver Peter Crawford Mills who says he's now considering an appeal to the city magistrates.
The licence hearing was held behind closed doors this week after being adjourned last month following a police objection.
A council report to last month's meeting said the premises have been used as a licensed taxi office since 1987 but in 2001 Northumbria Police established a link between the premises and convicted armed robber Sayers.
After this week's private hearing, a city council spokeswoman said: "The application was refused. Based on police evidence, the committee did not feel Mr Mills was a fit and proper person to hold a licence."
Mr Mills, 40, of Fenham, Newcastle, said: "I'm shocked my application was refused because I have a clean record.
"If I was not a fit and proper person I would have done something wrong in my life but I haven't. I want to work with the council."
Mr Mills said Mr Sayers would have no link with the business. "I've seen Mr Sayers around but I'm not in business with the lad and I don't know him socially."
Mr Mills, a father of one who was a driving instructor for 12 years before becoming a cabbie, is presently working as a taxi driver in Byker.
He says the history of the premises at the Balloon car park has no bearing on his application.
Mr Mills has been a licensed private hire driver since August 1997 and drove vehicles based at the Balloon car park before buying the business.
Mr Sayers was released from prison in 1999 after serving 11 years of a 15-year sentence for armed robbery. In an interview in 2002, he said he wanted to be left alone to go straight and make an honest living and was applying for taxi licence.
Last year he had an application for a licence turned down.
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