Taxi Driver Online

This is why taxi drivers are breaking the law in Nottingham says union

Taxi drivers are flouting the law and illegally plying for hire because there are far too many of them operating in the city centre claims a trade union. A call has been made to see the number of private hire vehicles that operate in Nottingham capped so that they are not forced into committing illegal activity.

Private hire vehicles can only pick up passengers when they have been pre-booked. They cannot be hailed down in the street in the same way as a hackney cab. This is called plying for hire and is illegal as the customer is not insured if an accident occurs and the driver is in breach of his or her licence. Other offences committed by illegal drivers include charging high fares, which happened when the snow fell last weekend and drivers were charging revellers up to £90 for short journeys home.

In Nottingham, there are around 1,700 Nottingham City Council licensed private hire drivers. But what the city council is seeing is "thousands" of other private hire drivers coming from Gedling, Rushcliffe, Broxtowe and even Wolverhampton to ply for hire on the city streets.

Private hire driver Azeem Hanif, 47, from Basford, is the chairman of the trade union - United Private Hire Drivers (Nottingham Branch) - which supports more than 100 private hire drivers. He does not condone plying for hire but explains why drivers are being forced into doing it.

He told the Post: "There are too many vehicles and too much competition. A driver gets to a point where he has to ply for hire to make money. "If we had 500 drivers that is probably enough but if it is 5,000 in the same location then there is not enough work.

"If we put a cap on the number then we have control over the number of drivers we have and the root cause will be taken away. "The reason I don’t do it (ply for hire) is because it is against the terms and conditions of my licence and it is ethically and morally wrong."

He said that talks had broken down with the head of licensing, Richard Antcliff, about working together to solve the problem. He said: "Richard has walked away from dialogue with us."

Mr Antcliff claims that 'offensive' comments left on social media site Twitter has meant that at this time he is not "engaging" with the union. However, Mr Antcliff said he was in favour of a cap on private hire drivers. He told the Post: "We would like to do it and we would like to stop the out of borough private hires like Gedling and Rushcliffe coming in but the law does not currently allow us to do it.

"We hope there will be a change. We are swamped with them, but it is no excuse to break the law and put people at risk. "I think the Government needs to change its legislation. We have written to the Government and ministers and the London Mayor to lobby the Government and have been in talks with the Department of Transport last week. There are far too many plying for hire.

"The union needs to accept they have a significant issue with fellow colleagues and need to support the council and the police to drive out rogue drivers. At the moment they are defending them."

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IDFIMH

So is the chairman not making any money, or is he wrong in claiming drivers need to ply for hire to make money.



So is he saying that it's about the law on plying for hire, or about numbers, or both. Or maybe just a loose use of language, but you'd expect a head of licensing to be a bit more precise about what he's saying.

all councils will say supply and demand if there is too many drivers then some will leave balancing it out but our trade doesn't work that way because for many of the drivers it is one of 2 or 3 jobs

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

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Maybe he has just come back from one of Mr Button's training events.

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IDFIMH

And also local demand is being met by non local cars.

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IDFIMH