Taxi Driver Online

Complaints about taxi drivers double in Calderdale as 12 drivers are suspended

Jun 9 2012

Complaints about Calderdale taxi drivers have more than doubled – as it was revealed 12 had their licences suspended last year.

Calderdale Council dealt with 95 complaints last year, up from 40 the year before.

Figures which will go before councillors on Monday reveal that 52 of those complaints were fully substantiated and the taxi driver was given a final written warning.

Nine driver licences were suspended and three vehicle licences suspended.

A further nine were given a verbal warning and legal proceedings are underway for two more.
Only last week one of the council’s licensing officers took to the beat in Brighouse as part of an operation to clamp down on unroadworthy vehicles.

Taxi drivers’ insurance was checked, as well as other necessities including having a first aid kit and fire extinguisher. There were no problems reported during the operation.

And it comes after the Examiner reported Rastrick residents’ complaints about the speed of taxis at a recent Police and Communities Together meeting.

The report reveals complaints include:

14 complaints of poor/dangerous standard of driving
49 complaints of unsatisfactory behaviour
22 complaints of plying for hire
6 complaints of overcharging
6 complaints of parking issues
8 complaints of failing to wear driver badge
3 complaints of poor vehicle standards.

The majority of the complaints, 79, were against licensed private hire drivers.

There are 64 hackney carriages with 211 hackney carriage drivers, and 675 private hire vehicles with 937 private hire drivers in the authority’s area.

Calderdale Council’s policy is for every vehicle to be subjected to impartial and objective testing. Figures show that in 2011 27% failed the council’s MOT testing and so far this year 51% have failed out of 117.

In a bid to increase public safety, licensing officers working with undercover cops carried out an operation to monitor whether private hire vehicles were illegally plying for trade.

The report says: “The operation consisted of plain clothed Police Officers posing as potential customers and awaiting licensed private hire drivers approaching them and offering to convey them without a prior booking, thus committing an offence of plying for hire and driving without insurance.

“The operations were extremely successful and in addition to some drivers being prosecuted and others being cautioned, members of the trade agreed that the situation had improved as a direct result of the action taken.”

The council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee will on Monday review the work in ensuring public safety whilst encouraging economic stability throughout the licensed trade.

Source; http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-we ... 1144975/2/

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

Sounds like they've got problems in Calderdale.

I'd say they are at least being pro-active about it though

14 complaints of poor/dangerous standard of driving
49 complaints of unsatisfactory behaviour
22 complaints of plying for hire
6 complaints of overcharging
6 complaints of parking issues
8 complaints of failing to wear driver badge
3 complaints of poor vehicle standards.

Still let this be a message to the LC about the real state of the trade, a simple look at who the complaint's were made against should reveal a pretty picture, and I don't mean whether they were PH or HC either.

Considering there are roughly 10x the number of PH vehicles and nearly 4.5x the number of drivers as there are HC then obviously there will be more complaints against them

But if you look at it a different way;

675x PH vehicles, 79 complaints = 11.7% complained about
64x HC vehicles, 16 complaints = 25% complained about

They fare better when you look at the number of drivers;

937 PH drivers = 8.43% complained about
211 HC drivers = 7.58% complained about

So when you break it down there's less than 1% difference in the number of complaints between HC and PH, that's taking the term majority a little far !

I wonder if that ratio will remain should the LC's proposal to bin taxi quotas come to be.

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IDFIMH

I find 64 Hackney Vehicles but 211 drivers thereof surprising.

In the same way 675 PH vehicles with 937 drivers is surprising.

This must be a Burg where people like to share I suppose.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

Part time drivers we have a lot of asian drivers round here for whom taxi driving is their 2nd or 3RD Job which they do at weekends or after their restaurant closes so probably the same there lots of part timers supplementing their waiters incomes by covering the nightclubs or members of the community making sure that muslim businesses never turn a job away as they do here

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

Not sure the word 'like' is the one that springs to mind. More like have no other option.

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IDFIMH