Taxi Driver Online

Looks like a special investigation by the Times newspaper in this morning's edition. A shedload of reading, so might be worth buying a copy if you don't like reading lots of text on screen, and also for the graphics and photos that aren't included below. There also seems to be at least one other section called 'A roll call of sexual predators' which I haven't been able to access.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/taxi ... -chkkqxshg

Haven't had time to read it all yet, but great to see a national focus on the issues by a prominent newspaper, particularly as the nationals normally take little interest in the trade's affairs unless it's related to London.

A lot of the stuff won't be particularly new to the kind of anoraks who read sites like this, but still some useful insights by the looks of it.


Taxi scandal: public safety ‘at risk’ as thousands of cab drivers exploit law

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news ... -klr5p0583

Councils have been accused of putting public safety at risk by handing out thousands of licences to taxi drivers from across the country while in some cases failing to monitor criminal records.

One local authority licensed almost 4,000 drivers despite having only 13 taxi ranks. It then seemingly lost track of their criminal records and failed to admit its errors.

Another issued 9,000 licences to drivers employed by minicab firms across England and allowed each firm to set up a local “operating base” even though they had no employees and no vehicles in its area.

Serious failings at Rossendale, in Lancashire, and a legal loophole exploited by Wolverhampton emerged during an investigation by The Times that found many councils issued licences to drivers despite knowing that they had past convictions for sex offences, including rape.

More than 330 alleged sex assaults by taxi or minicab drivers were reported to police in 2016-17. In the past decade 131 drivers have been found guilty of sex offences against passengers. Among them were more than 40 men convicted of rape, including the “black cab rapist” John Worboys.

One small local authority in Nottinghamshire issued hundreds of taxi licences to men living outside its area, one of whom later carried out a sex attack on a young female passenger. Taxi drivers were also heavily implicated in the child sexual exploitation scandals of Rotherham and Rochdale.

In recent years a handful of English local authorities have received hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees from taxi and minicab licences issued to men with no intention of working in their region. They include Rossendale, whose taxi ranks have space for 75 vehicles but which licensed more than 3,700 taxi drivers last year, and Wolverhampton, where dozens of minicab firms across Britain have been licensed as local operators despite having no employees or vehicles in the city. Sales of minicab driver licences by Wolverhampton council rose from 852 in 2015 to more than 9,000 this year.

The vast majority of drivers licensed by both authorities live and work elsewhere. Councils with hundreds of “cross-border” drivers working in their area blame lax national regulations for creating a licensing free-for-all that undermines local safeguarding measures. The Times understands that in Rotherham, where 47 taxi drivers were stripped of their licences after its sex-grooming scandal, men who were judged unfit to hold a licence continued to work in the town after being approved by another local authority.

Police revealed last week that 60 minicab drivers suspected of child sexual exploitation in Newcastle upon Tyne have had their licences suspended. Almost half are thought to have been licensed by different councils.

Licensing officers in Rochdale said three years ago that efforts to tackle sexual exploitation and improve “driver probity” were undermined by the “numerous drivers” working under licences issued by neighbouring Rossendale, where a “lower standard” was applied. Drivers with Rossendale licences have been convicted of offences in York, Milton Keynes and Manchester. In 2016 its licences were used by more than 400 taxi drivers working in Sheffield, 250 in Derby and 200 in Bradford.

This newspaper has been told that for at least six months until the summer of 2016, Rossendale renewed scores of taxi licences without knowing drivers’ up-to-date criminal records. After concerns were raised internally by a whistleblower, the council’s licensing manager was suspended and swiftly left the authority. A “change of policy” was urgently introduced under which staff were told that no licences were to be renewed unless the applicant presented an enhanced DBS (disclosure and barring service) certificate issued no more than a month earlier.

An internal investigation was held but the affair was kept quiet and the council paid an out-of-court settlement to the whistleblower under which she was required to sign a gagging clause.

Last night there were calls for an independent inquiry into the whistleblower’s allegations. The council said that the claims had been fully investigated and were unfounded. It said it was confident that it had not issued any taxi licences “to anyone who should not have received one”. Since 2016 Rossendale has introduced measures to reduce the number of licences it issues.

Wolverhampton council said last night that it operated a “robust and rigorous” vetting procedure. Its approach embraced digital technology, “consumer-driven demand” and offered “the best taxi licensing system in the UK”.

The Suzie Lamplugh Trust, which this year published a report detailing multiple examples of local authorities licensing men with criminal convictions for offences of violence including battery and assault, said that the licensing regulations were not fit for purpose.


Taxi scandal: borough with a taxi driver for every 19 residents

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/taxi ... -830q232rq

Men from across the north sought licences from a town hall that was seen as a soft touch

Its sandstone villages and mill towns made the Lancashire borough of Rossendale an unlikely candidate for taxi capital of England.

The Labour-run authority is home to 69,800 people. The biggest town, Rawtenstall, has no police station and its shopping centre was demolished in 2013. It has a monthly Clog Market.

In 2007 Rossendale licensed 150 taxi drivers. Last year it licensed 3,756 — far more than any other English council. Next on the list were Manchester (2,329), Liverpool (2,224) and Birmingham (1,338).

In England and Wales last year one person in 1,000 was a taxi driver. In London, there was one black cab driver for every 357 residents. Dizzingly, Rossendale theoretically has a taxi driver for every 19 residents.

Competition at its 75 taxi rank spaces would be fierce but for the fact that the vast majority of the drivers licensed by Rossendale did not live there. They had no intention of working in a borough whose tourism spokesman said last year that he aimed to revitalise the moribund nightlife with a model based on the nearby world black pudding throwing championships.

Hailing instead from across northern England and the Midlands, they set their sights on a Rossendale taxi licence because the council was perceived to be a soft touch. The licensing authorities in northern cities imposed stricter tests and requirements before granting a licence. Some charged higher fees. Others tested geographical knowledge, English skills, insisted on safeguarding training or applied a stricter interpretation of the “fit and proper” person test.

Word spread that getting a Rossendale hackney carriage licence was easier. Any driver with one could take pre-booked “private hire vehicle”, or minicab, work anywhere. The surge in numbers was spectacular. While England and Wales overall had a 15 per cent decline in the total of licensed taxi drivers in 2007-17, the number in Rossendale soared by 2,404 per cent.

And so did the money earned by the council. In 2011, when it licensed 248 drivers and 159 taxis, Rossendale’s fee income was £92,000. Six years later, after licensing 3,756 drivers and 1,890 taxis, it was £783,000.

Councils hit by an influx of Rossendale-plated drivers had no power to stop and check the “cross-border” taxis and knew nothing about the drivers. The authorities seeking to impose high safety standards found their hands tied.

Particular concerns were felt in Rotherham and Rochdale, where minicab drivers were prominent among men for whom the sexual abuse of young girls was routine. After inquiries in 2014 and 2015 condemned flaws in Rotherham’s taxi-licensing operation, the council imposed a tough regime and dozens of drivers lost their licences.

Measures to improve passenger safety included video cameras in all vehicles, but Rotherham can only enforce such a rule on the taxis it licenses. Vehicles licensed elsewhere are exempt and drivers whose licences were revoked, or whose applications were rejected by Rotherham for reasons including safeguarding concerns, have been able to obtain them from other councils.

Alan Pogorzelec, Rotherham’s chief licensing officer, described cross-border licensing as “the single biggest threat” to maintaining high standards “and to the safety of anyone who uses a [minicab] in this country”.

In Rochdale, so great was the concern at the “numerous” Rossendale taxi drivers that a 2015 council report warned of a serious threat to its efforts to reduce sexual exploitation of children. Measures taken locally were being jeopardised “by a policy adopted by a neighbouring authority which allows drivers over whom this authority has no control to operate [here]”.

“Drivers licensed by Rossendale have not completed the area knowledge test this authority requires. Residents have reported that the language skills of Rossendale drivers are often poor, making communication difficult.”

Similar concerns about “cross-border” licensing were voiced in 2016 by the authorities in Derby and Sheffield.

They would have been more alarmed had they known that in the summer of 2016 a hole in Rossendale’s licensing system was identified by a whistleblower and hushed up by the council. By then Rossendale was cutting the number of licences issued to people living outside the borough. On the surface all seemed well but a new member of staff was given the curious task of checking recent licence renewals to see whether the drivers had an up-to-date DBS (disclosure and barring service) certificate when the renewal was approved.

From subsequent internal discussions, it appears that doubts were raised about checks carried out by Rossendale when taxi licences, which ran for a period of three years, were due for renewal. These were put to the licensing and enforcement manager, Tracy Brzozowski, who is said to have assured senior management that all was well.

What the junior member of staff discovered in May 2016 would lead to Mrs Brzozowski’s suspension. Weeks later she quietly resigned as a director of the Institute of Licensing and left the council soon afterwards. Mrs Brzozowski said yesterday that during her time at Rossendale all licences were issued in line with the relevant policy and she was “not aware of any irregularities”.

The junior employee found that the council seemed to have no record of new DBS certificates for the vast majority of the 149 drivers whose renewals had most recently been granted. She was told to ask the drivers to produce the document but by the end of that process 86 were still missing.

Without an up-to-date certificate, the council could not know if a driver had received any relevant conviction or caution in the preceding three years, nor whether police had any “soft” intelligence about the driver. Frustrated that her bosses in the licensing section appeared not to grasp the gravity of the situation, the employee turned internal whistleblower. Rossendale would later admit, in employment tribunal documents seen by The Times, that it eventually checked 5,289 taxi licences and found “discrepancies” with 551 of them. The council said yesterday that when it reviewed the 149 cases highlighted by the whistleblower it established that “all DBS checks were in place”. It did not explain why, if that was so, Mrs Brzozowski emailed colleagues on May 11, 2016, shortly before her suspension, announcing a “change of procedure with immediate effect”. She told them that “following a review, renewal applications will no longer be accepted for processing where there is no enhanced DBS certificate”. Such applications “should be rejected without delay”.

Copied in to the email were the chief executive, Stuart Sugarman, and legal services manager, Clare Birtwistle, who later led the inquiry into the whistleblower’s claims and appears to have given the council a clean bill of health.

The whistleblower had also informed senior managers that in some cases licensing staff were instructed to accept photographs and photocopies of certificates in place of the real document. She also revealed that in dealing with applications from foreigners, for whom it was not possible to carry out DBS checks, staff were told to accept a “certificate of good conduct” issued by the relevant embassy but had no training to assess if such documents were genuine.

Far from convinced that her concerns were being adequately addressed, the whistleblower resigned and initiated employment tribunal proceedings. An out-of-court settlement was agreed last year and the council inserted a clause under which she had to destroy confidential papers and pledged not to reveal any “disparaging” information.

This year Rossendale announced that the number of taxis licensed by the council had fallen from 2,600 in 2016 to 1,165. It has siginificantly improved its systems for checking criminal records.

The council said yesterday that its priority had always been the safety of passengers and drivers. “Our policies have always been based on national guidelines. The issues raised here have previously been investigated and were unfounded. We are confident that we have not issued licences to anyone who should not have received one and that all DBS checks were in place.”

Meanwhile, the cross-border taxi circus continues. In the West Midlands there is another council of choice for aspiring drivers in need of a quick and easy licence — Wolverhampton.


Taxi scandal: riddle of firms all based in single office

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/taxi ... -hpsrrfhw0

Above a diner and accessible only via a back door off a dingy alley stands a small and unremarkable office.

To the untrained eye, it is the home of a local minicab firm, Wednesfield Cars, whose manager is adamant that his is the only business operating there.

Wolverhampton council knows better. It has licensed 13 competing taxi companies to run their operations from the very same office.

In the past three years, Wolverhampton has become the go-to local authority for thousands of drivers from all corners of England in search of a minicab licence. In 2015, it issued 852; this year, 9,388. The same period saw the number of minicab companies licensed to operate in the city climb from 12 to 100.

In total, 58 of those companies are listed as operating from one of four Wolverhampton addresses. When The Times visited, there was no trace of 52 of them.

The council has not merely licensed dozens of hard-to-spot firms at those locations. It has also issued licences to thousands of drivers who work in other English towns for companies with exactly the same business names as the Wolverhampton operators. Those firms run visible minicab operations in places including Birmingham, Manchester, Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Derby, Mansfield, Nottingham, Cambridge, Windsor & Maidenhead and Swale, in Kent.

One of the four addresses has for the past few years been the operations hub for a genuine local company called ABC Cars and its sister ABC Countdown Cars. According to the council, an additional 17 minicab firms operate at the same place. Not so, says Richard Halsall, ABC’s manager, who said he had never heard of any of them.

Licensing experts have suggested an explanation. Under the Deregulation Act 2015, minicab companies operating anywhere are entitled to subcontract work to other firms, with one proviso.

If a minicab firm in Manchester wants to use drivers and vehicles licensed by Wolverhampton, the pre-booked work they are given must be sub-contracted to the firm by a Wolverhampton minicab operator. So it would be convenient for the Manchester firm to be able to show that all the jobs it gives its Wolverhampton drivers were sub-contracted by its sister firm, of the same name, in the West Midlands city.

If that sister operator has no employees and runs no vehicles, the law does not seem to care. This loophole has been embraced by Wolverhampton council, whose “efficient” approach to licensing has proved highly lucrative. Its income from taxi and minicab licences rose from £263,000 in 2014-15 to £2.2 million in 2017-18.

Last night the council defended its conduct, insisting that it applied stringent standards to drivers it licenses and claiming that its popularity was due to swift and efficient online applications.

The authority’s licensing committee chairman, Alan Bolshaw, said its approach complied with relevant legislation and, by embracing digitalisation, was far more advanced that the “very traditional and rigid licensing practices” used by other local authorities.

To suggest that a minicab operator needed to have employees, drivers and vehicles in the area where it was based was a concept that belonged, he said, to the days of “long-winded and outdated processes”.

The 52 minicab operators that did not appear to exist at the four addresses were entirely legitimate. Each was, he said, represented at its registered operating base by a digital recording system, in the form of a box. “Why are there so many vehicles and drivers on the roads licensed by Wolverhampton council? Because we have the best licensing system in the UK,” he boasted.

Other councils would beg to disagree, particularly those hit by a recent influx of Wolverhampton-licensed minicab drivers and cars. Many, as was the case with the earlier surge in Rossendale-plated vehicles, have voiced safeguarding concerns.

Licensing officers in Southampton were contacted by Hampshire police investigating the alleged rape of a female passenger by a local driver. The council did not have him on its books and it turned out that he had been licensed by Wolverhampton.

In Rotherham, the town hit by a mass sex-grooming scandal in which minicab drivers were implicated, more than a dozen men, including five refused licences by the council for reasons including safeguarding concerns, have applied for Wolverhampton licences.

Birmingham councillors claim that Wolverhampton is “more lenient” than its neighbours. A Coventry licensing committee member complained that “treating taxi licensing as a cash cow undermines public safety”. The West Midlands authority was handing out minicab licences “like sweeties”.

Nottingham’s chief licensing officer, Richard Antcliff, accused Wolverhampton of exploiting a “farcical loophole” in the regulations. “Somewhere along the line, Wolverhampton has lost its moral compass,” he said.

The driver arrested in Southampton had no convictions and lost his licence immediately, Mr Bolshaw said. Wolverhampton had “worked extensively” with Rotherham council and the National Crime Agency “to ensure any drivers implicated in child exploitation do not gain Wolverhampton licences”.


Taxi scandal: old legislation lets villains slip through net

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/taxi ... -ddbf5qnpf

The primary aim of taxi licensing is to protect the public but inadequate regulation has made it far too easy for dangerous men to slip through the net and a recent surge in “cross-border” hiring has increased the vulnerability of passengers.

In an era of smartphones and Uber the principal legislation for taxis dates from 1847 and 1976.

Outside the capital, where taxi licensing is the responsibility of Transport for London, the task of licensing taxis (hackney carriages) and minicabs (private hire vehicles) falls on local authorities.

Two licences, for driver and vehicle, are required for taxis, which are allowed to wait for fares at designated ranks and can also ply for hire on the streets. Minicabs, which must only undertake booked journeys, require three licences, for driver, vehicle and operator. Uber cars are classified as minicabs.

No taxi or minicab driver can be issued a licence unless he or she is held to be a “fit and proper” person. Some councils are much tougher than others in refusing licences to applicants with criminal convictions.

Most councils require licences to be renewed every three years, but the requirements vary across the country.

Licensing fees also vary widely. A minicab driver licence costs £228 in Birmingham, £260 in Nottingham, £280 in Derby and £290 in Leeds. In Wolverhampton, it is only £69. Varying requirements and fees have led would-be cabbies to shop around.

When drivers use their licence to work far from the authority that issued it, enforcement officers have no powers to check vehicle roadworthiness and no knowledge of the driver’s background.

The Institute of Licensing has published guidelines on assessing applicants and believes that a change in regulations is long overdue.

All very true, but they seem to have missed the testing of vehicles by Wolverhampton.

How long before this chap loses his job?

_________________
Grandad,

The 52 minicab operators that did not appear to exist at the four addresses were entirely legitimate. Each was, he said, represented at its registered operating base by a digital recording system, in the form of a box. “Why are there so many vehicles and drivers on the roads licensed by Wolverhampton council? Because we have the best licensing system in the UK for dodgy drivers and vehicles ,” he boasted.


corrected for accuracy

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

Testing is done in Mansfield

Interesting stuff.

I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I saw it front page of The Times.

_________________
IDFIMH

Testing can only be done in the licensing borough,did not think Mansfield was part of Wolverhampton Council.

He won't, not when he's bringing in that sort of money and being advised by David Wilson the ex Berwick Upon Tweed Licensing officer.

Several garages now have authority to test wolverhampton plated vehicles, even a Taxi Company in Mansfield has it's own garage and authority to test Wolverhampton plated vehicles.

Did you hear him on Radio 5 Live?

Was doing reasonably well until the presenter asked him how many taxi ranks there were in Wolverhampton. Obviously didn't know, and indeed he said he was just plucking a figure out of the air, and said a dozen, then the line went dead.

To be fair I don't necessarily think it's reasonable even for a licensing chair to know the answer, but the presenter was clearly alluding to vehicle licences v rank space, which he should have said was irrelevant because the issue is about PHVs?

But that was a (predictable) problem with the whole piece - it totally ignored the HC v PHV distinction.

Which isn't necessarily a problem since the issue was more about cross-border working and standards shopping, and to that degree the distinction isn't necessarily relevant, but at the point about rank space the distinction surely *was* relevant.

Likewise, on the second segment when the Rossendale official was saying it was all hunky dory there now because of changes they'd made, he compared Wolverhampton unfavourably when of course the issue there is PHVs rather than Rossendale's HCs. He should surely have made the legal distinction clear, because it's different laws and different ways of working.

Or am I missing something?

Anyone wants to listen to the stuff on iPlayer, the programme's link is:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b39r93

The first segment starts at around 6.30 mins, the second piece starts around 1.06.30

The question put to the councillor about rank space is at around 15.30

Not sure if there were any other segments - it's a three hour programme.

Seems to be more stuff in the Times this morning. One piece called "Taxi scandal: transport ministers dismissed fears over cross-border licence rules".

Unfortunately I used up my free articles yesterday and can't be bothered registering any more accounts to glimpse behind the paywall

Taxi scandal: transport ministers dismissed fears over cross-border licence rules

Transport ministers have been accused of encouraging a “race to the bottom” in the taxi industry that threatens passenger safety. The criticism followed a Times investigation into lax regulation that allows thousands of cross-border minicab drivers to work in towns far from the local authority that licensed them.

Councils that introduced tough safeguarding measures after the Rotherham grooming scandal, in which minicab drivers were implicated, have no control over drivers working in their area with a licence issued elsewhere. The GMB union estimated that 35,000 minicab drivers worked permanently outside the boundaries of the council that issued their licence. Men denied a licence by their home authority due to criminal convictions or suspected child sexual exploitation have been able to obtain licences from other councils.

Department for Transport correspondence seen by The Times shows that ministers initially dismissed concerns about the impact of the Deregulation Act 2015, which triggered a huge rise in cross-border working. Sarah Champion, the Rotherham MP, warned ministers in 2015 of the local council’s concern that deregulation would “reduce the authority’s ability to properly regulate the trade within the borough and that child protection may suffer as a result”.

She was rebuffed by Andrew Jones, a junior transport minister, but 12 months later he changed his stance. When Vera Baird, the Northumbria police and crime commissioner, raised similar concerns Mr Jones assured her that the DfT’s best practice guidance for councils was being updated. Two years on no update has been issued.

More than 8,000 of the 9,388 drivers licensed by Wolverhampton council do not live or work in the city. Wolverhampton said it acted within the law and had strict vetting procedures.

It was also revealed that Rossendale council, in Lancashire, which in 2017 issued 3,756 taxi driver licences, seemingly lost track of drivers’ criminal records then failed to admit its errors. Rossendale said it fully investigated concerns raised internally by a whistleblower and found them to be unfounded.

The local MP, Jake Berry, demanded an independent inquiry into the allegations. “This is an issue of public safety. The claim that little or no checks were carried out is potentially an incredibly worrying breach of public protection.”

Mick Rix, the GMB’s national officer for taxi and minicab drivers, said deregulation created a free-for-all in the licensing market. “It’s a race to the bottom with major public safety implications,” he said. “We need enforceable action and revamped legislation but the government has been resistant.”

The Times understands that ministers want to stop cross-border hiring. They are also thought to support a national database for private-hire drivers and will consider new legislation.

_________________
IDFIMH

I am sure that in one of the articles it stated that these vehicles were Hackney plated.

_________________
Grandad,

The Wolverhampton ones? According to the council's website HCs have to be type approved, which doesn't rule out their use for PH operators elsewhere, but on the other hand isn't consistent with shopping around for the most basic standards.

The Times stuff refers to minicabs, and the ghost accommodation addresses set up in Wolverhampton with their box of tricks. Which wouldn't be necessary if they were HCs, because they could just go and work for a despatch operation anywhere in the country without any licensing implications for the despatch operation. Thus just as the Rossendale HCs have been doing, but pretty sure the Wolverhampton vehicles are PHVs.

The main problem, which I have stated on here many times before, is the lack of national standards for PH and HC licencing and testing across the country as we have in the bus industry.

We keep reading of public safety being jeopardised, but is it really so? Are some councils' standards really that much more lax than their neighbours?

Taxi and ph drivers would I suggest regularly fail to do even a basic walk-round safety check before they drive their vehicle for the first time every day. Just doing that could improve safety standards by fixing minor defects which could turn into major problems. How many work far more hours than permitted by the working time directive? Tiredness has been recognised as a major factor in road safety, hence the need for tachographs in lorries and coaches.

Surely all drivers undergo the same CRB (or whatever it's called this week) check? Ah no, those who have recently entered the UK are not on the list so are able to slip through the net. So that causes one major concern for public safety. Maybe alter the law so that nobody can be a hc or ph driver until they've been resident here for say 2 years. But then the CRB check is only any good if those who do wrong haven't been caught yet.

My view is the whole licencing system is broken and needs a major shake-up which I thought was what the Law Commission report of a few years ago was about.