Taxi Driver Online

Private hire taxi drivers planning protest over penalty point scheme

Private hire taxi drivers have said they risk falling foul of new council rules every time they come into the city because there is nowhere for them to wait. Under the controversial Driver Improvement Penalty Point Scheme (DIPPS), taxi drivers are given points for any unacceptable driving behaviour, such as parking on double yellow lines or in bus stops.

Nottingham City Council launched the scheme in September 2016 in a bid to crackdown on bad driving and taxis illegally plying for hire. It means drivers committing a variety of offences, such as parking on double yellow lines, in bus stops or blocking traffic could be given penalty points.

If they rack up enough points, which are handed out by community protection officers (CPO) their licence could be suspended by the council. But private hire taxi drivers, who cannot pick up passengers from ranks like hackney cabs, say they are risking picking up penalty points whenever they come into the city due to there being nowhere for them to wait.

Aneel Ghafoor, who has been a taxi driver for seven years, said: "If you drive into the city, there is no where for you to park other than on double yellow lines or in bus stops or places like that. "Every time we come into the city for a pick up or a drop off we are risking picking up these points because we are having to wait in areas where there are double yellows. "It is a major issue for us in the city centre."

Imran Idrees, who has been driving taxis for more than 17 years, said he and his colleagues are considering holding a protest or striking over the issue. The 37-year-old said: "I have spoken to a few of the other drivers are we are considering taking action because this is a big issue for us.

"We have certain amounts of times we are told to wait for passengers before cancelling the job. For Uber it is five minutes, for a private hire firm it is 10 minutes. "We cannot wait that long in the city centre without a CPO coming over to us and telling us to move or we will get penalty points. It has happened to me twice now."

Nottingham City Council has said taxi drivers waiting for customers are given a grace period and reiterated the main focus of the scheme is to tackle taxis illegally plying for hire. A spokesman for Nottingham City Council said: "Private hire taxis must be pre-booked and if this is the case, they can pull up on yellow lines for a short period to drop off or pick up their passengers.

"However, they cannot park on yellow lines waiting for potential passengers, since this is illegal plying for hire. "Our taxi enforcement team has been clamping down on this recently and will continue to do so where private hire drivers are effectively creating an illegal taxi rank in the city. "They allow a grace period for drivers who are legally collecting or depositing passengers, although we would discourage the use of bus stops for this."

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IDFIMH

oh diddums are they not going to be able to tout for fares now

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

Strike! Yeah, that’ll work.

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Former taxi driver

So what are private hire drivers supposed to do, you drop your passenger off at say 10.05 in zone one (town centre) a quick check shows there's a 10.15 job in your zone which will go live at 10.10 and your car one, do you just drive aimlessly around the town centre causing pollution and wasting fuel for five minutes ?

this is Nottingham we are talking about the most ANTI CAR council in the world

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

Never seen a strike work in the taxi/PH trade in the years I've been in it.

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IDFIMH

Good point.

Maybe the PH firms need to issue work a bit more savvy, i.e. the system will know a driver or drivers are dropping in an area with work about to be dispatched, so dispatch the work earlier.

But you point is valid, and this will no doubt assist the Wolverhampton Uber vehicles flooding the Midlands as the points will mean sweet f*** all to them.

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IDFIMH

dozens of em filling the short stay at Burmingum international sunday night all wolverhampton plated !!

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

That would mean that the punter would receive a text earlier and they may panic that the car will be gone. It would also require someone to "interfeer" with the system to dispatch earlier. It would also mean the driver arriving early and the pda saying thae job was asap when it isn't.
But apart from that............

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Grandad,

Set it so the driver sends the text.

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IDFIMH

Yep, mind you I did win a bus and tramway appeal, I asked them to point out where the tramlines were when they took a photo of my car? They wrote back apologising and dropped the ticket.