Taxi Driver Online

Use it or lose it: Dozens of Glasgow taxi drivers licenses suspended for NOT living here

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/1629 ... ving_here/

Dozens of Glasgow cab drivers had their permits suspended this week.

Licensing bosses swung the axe on a list of cabbies whose registered addresses are outside of the city.

For 19 of the drivers, their time on the road was effectively ended as the suspensions go up to their licence expiry dates.

Manchester, London, Rotherham and Bolton were all listed as addresses, with many of the cabbies having never used their permit.

Ibniamin Khan, was the only one who was given a two-week penalty after he failed to use his private hire car for seven months when he was living in Yorkshire and Germany.

Alex Wilson, chair of the licensing committee told him: “We gave you a licence in 2017 and you’ve not used it.

“If you had read the terms and conditions of the licence you would know that you should have surrendered your licence.

“You are supposed to do that if you’ve not used it within any three-month period.

“You should never have applied for a licence if you had no intention of using it.”

But Mr Khan said: “I haven’t used my licence because I was looking for a car.

“My brother was then involved in a crash and I moved over to Germany to be with him for several months.

“I have now got a car and have moved to Glasgow. I moved here because I want to work here.”

All of those whose licences were suspended were called to appear in front of the committee.

The drivers who had their permits suspended until the end of their licence expiry will have to wait to apply for a new licence if they want to operate in Glasgow.

Interesting, but suspect the newspaper's headline above is inaccurate - unless the legislation has been changed it would be illegal to suspend/revoke a licence because of where the holder lives. If they're living far from Glasgow then that might provide evidence that the licence is dormant, but don't think it's the deciding factor.

And as per a similar case in Glasgow a few weeks ago, it's not clear whether the piece is about taxis or PH or both, or badges or plates, or both. Someone in the comments suggests it's about PH and/or Uber, but I don't know.

Suspect it's about plates and there's no car being presented for test, which obviously provides evidence that the licensed activity has ceased. If a badge is in issue and the plate has a vehicle attached, then not sure how the council would know whether they were actually been used. There's certainly been plenty of dormant badges around elsewhere in Scotland, and also plated vehicles which aren't used for hire and reward purposes (although less likely than the dormant badge scenario), and I doubt if in the normal course of events the council would be aware that the licence is not being used as long as all the paperwork is in order and a vehicle is presented for testing as required.

So suspect it's about plates without a vehicle, but the piece says some licences have *never* been used, in which case why would a council issue a vehicle licence in the first place if no vehicle is presented on initial application?

glasgow has a clause in your licence conditions which state that if your licence is not used for a period of 3 months then it must be returned to the city council,a licence being issued without a vehicle is because you may not have a vehicle when applying for the licence,some people wait to see if a licence is granted and then they go about buying a vehicle

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i started out with nothing and ive still got most of it left

Interesting, and I think the normal presumption is that if a plate is applied for then a vehicle must be specified as part of the application. Note that in Fife the only exception before grant of the licence is for hire and reward insurance:



But I suspect Glasgow's approach to granting a licence without specifying a vehicle more probably complies with the law, but normally applicants will just go with the flow and not challenge the process.

In fact I think there's a legal judgement or two about applying for a licence without a vehicle, but suspect they were specifically relating to HC applications where there was a limit on numbers.

But suspect similar principles would apply even when it's a PH application or HC application in areas where numbers are unlimited, and thus why Glasgow allows it.

To me this looks a case of driving license in Glasgow but working elsewhere on that license.

More than likely for Uber.

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IDFIMH

I think probably applied for license in Glasgow but decided not to work there

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

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My bet is on licenses granted but no car presented for testing, as is consistent with what Mr Blogz from Glasgow says.

And if you look on the council's application webpage, down the right hand side there's a link to a letter that can be completed for those applying for a 'no car licence'.

https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=17616

Another factor is that in Scotland the cross-border thing doesn't work - you can take people to other areas and pick up pre-booked fares from other areas, but you can't permanently station cars in areas they aren't licensed in.

All makes sense really - as I said above, although the presumption is generally that an application requires you to specify a car, if you think your application might not be approved then even if it's just a £5k saloon or whatever, then no point in buying one before your application is approved and then maybe having to sell it on again if your application is unsuccessful.

Another factor again in Glasgow is that I think they have a five-year vehicle age limit on new applications, so again you'd typically need a fairly new vehicle, so no point buying on spec if you don't own one already.

Think there are around 3,000 PH cars in Glasgow, so there are bound to be a few oddball scenarios cropping up, ie people changing circumstances unexpectedly, moving away from the area etc.

And allowing 'no-car' applications probably conforms with the law, which is presumably why Glasgow allows it, but elsewhere I suspect most councils just say that you have to specify a car to apply, and people never challenge it, which is why it never arises elsewhere (or at least we don't hear about it).

And perhaps the specific requirement to surrender the licence if it's inactive is something peculiar to Scotland, which again is maybe why we don't hear about the Glasgow scenario elsewhere.