Liverpool cabbies decide to give minicab firm free publicity shocker!Up to 100 city cab drivers hold late-night crisis meeting at Kings Dock over arrival of Delta in Liverpool Disquiet is brewing between Merseyside's hackney taxis and private-hire vehicles. Photo: Matthew Fearn/PA Wire
Up to 100 city taxi drivers held an emergency meeting following the news that Sefton-based cab firm Delta was opening up offices in Liverpool.
The Taxi Alliance, comprising of both hackney and private hire drivers, gathered at Kings Dock late on Sunday night to discuss the bombshell.
For years city firms and cabbies have complained that Delta have been undermining their chances of making a living, being licensed in neighbouring Sefton but getting a huge share of the Liverpool trade.
But their anger at Delta, which has 2,000 licensed drivers, appears to be matched by fury with the council, which they believe has kept the knowledge of Delta’s plans secret from them in numerous meetings.
READ MORE: Liverpool cabbies predict the outbreak of a 'taxi war' as Delta moves into heart of city centre
The Taxi Alliance’s leaders have been meeting with council officials precisely to discuss the impact the Bootle-based firm was having on their own livelihoods.
Alliance spokesman Jimmy Bradley said there had been no mention of the plans when the taxi forum – attended by representatives of the licensing department and Mayor Joe Anderson’s office – last met at the end of October.
He said Delta’s plans – which will include a call centre at Brunswick Dock – must have been in the pipeline for some time, but there is no information at present as to how long the proposals have been known to the council.
Mr Bradley said: “The council will be rubbing their hands (at the income from Delta), but it’s so shocking that we have had four representatives at several meetings and they never once mentioned this when we were discussing Delta.
“You don’t just open up a taxi office. This must have been going on for three months.”
The last minutes of the Taxi Forum state that Ben Fitzpatrick, who works in Mayor Anderson’s office, had expressed the mayor’s “commitment to the Liverpool taxi trade”.
Mayor Anderson has long been a critic of Delta, and has campaigned on the issue for many years.
Today a spokesperson for Liverpool City Council said: “The City Council and the Mayor have been working with the drivers, operators, owners and customers of the licensed Liverpool taxi and private hire trade to get the best possible outcome for all.
“The Mayor has instituted a forum to give the trade a clear voice, working together to resolve issues in the city, remove barriers impacting on business, and support the trade during large scale international events.
“The City Council is not able to comment on the specifics of any individual application or licence holder. In general terms, as the local Licensing Authority, the City Council has to act within the law set down by national Government.
“Therefore, the Council is under a legal duty to grant private hire operator licences to applicants who meet the criteria. To refuse an application on any other grounds would leave the Council open to legal proceedings.
“All licences granted to private hire operators are made subject to conditions aimed at ensuring satisfactory records are kept of all bookings in order to protect public safety. In addition, by law, all private hire operators licensed by the City Council must only use drivers and vehicles also licensed by the City Council to fulfil their bookings.
“The Mayor is committed to continue working with the Liverpool taxi trade and continues to call on the Government to rethink its Deregulation Bill that will have a wide ranging impact on the trade in the city.”
But Mr Bradley said he believed Mayor Anderson had to become the focus of taxi drivers’ anger now Delta were being allowed to move into the city.
He added the meeting last night had seen the launch of the “Taxi For Joe Anderson” campaign, and that the 6,000 licenced drivers in the city would be working together with other pressure groups to get the 5% of electors’ signatures needed to force a recall referendum on Mayor Anderson’s mayoralty.
Quite how the Liverpool Delta office will operate is not yet clear.
A source said that it would book in requests for cabs that had come through the firm’s online and mobile phone app while traditional phoned bookings will still be handled and dispatched by the Bootle office.
While city-based private hire drivers are angry at the move, the source said Delta drivers who are registered in Sefton should also be concerned about the move.
The source added: “The people who should be up in arms about this are the long standing Sefton-badged Delta drivers who are now going to see their workload decreased.
“The Liverpool office and any Liverpool-badged taxi driver that opts to come and work for Delta will only have access to jobs that are booked through Delta’s mobile phone /internet app ... any jobs that are phoned through to Delta on the normal number are only available to Sefton badged-drivers.
“This in effect means that Delta are taking work from their own core base group of Sefton-badged drivers and giving it to a new group of Liverpool-badged drivers. It also means that any Liverpool-badged drivers who choose to move to Delta are working form a much smaller pool of the work available to the company as a whole.”
Delta is one of Europe’s largest taxi firms, with its fleet of drivers taking 10m bookings a year.
Its boss, Paul McLaughlin, could not be contacted for comment today, but in December last year, when the Liverpool Taxi Alliance took a vote of no confidence in council licensing chiefs over the amount of city work going to Delta cabs, he said: “As far as we are concerned, the council’s doing a fantastic job, everything the law requires, but it’s the city taxi drivers who want to take the law back 100 years.
“If other firms invested the same in technology and training as we do then they might have the same success.”
source:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liv ... rs-8207481
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