Taxi Driver Online

With the two pieces this week about the establishment of common licensing standards to address the cross-border issue in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands/Birmingham, maybe worth revisting this about Merseyside from last year. The relevant part of the article is highlighted in bold.

Crackdown on taxi drivers coming from as far as Leeds and London to ply trade in Liverpool

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li ... r-12597187

The move comes after a group of local drivers took matters into their own hands over the weekend

Taxi drivers are reported to be coming into Liverpool from as far away as London - making hundreds of pounds in the city before heading home.

Liverpool council has also had reports of drivers with poor local knowledge heading to the city centre on busy days and taking trade from local firms.

And one group of cabbies appeared to take matters into their own hands over the weekend – blocking in an Uber driver who allegedly had a Transport for London licence before he was said to have been “escorted out of the city.”

Now Mayor Joe Anderson said he is taking steps to clamp down on the “free for all” private hire trade he says has formed across the city region.

And this could include a new universal licence for drivers across the six city-region boroughs as well as a more general Knowledge-style test.

Mayor Anderson said: “We have evidence of drivers coming from places as far away as Leeds to pick up work in the city centre.

“There was an Uber driver who came from Leeds for a match day in Liverpool and stayed to work until 3am, picking up a few hundred quid then going back to Leeds – that does not help Liverpool.

“It is a free for all at the minute, with people working here who do not understand the city.”

He said he has received reports of other drivers lacking basic geographical knowledge of the city – such as where Dingle is.

Mayor Anderson said he has now spoken with the leaders of all the city-region boroughs and is putting together a task group to look at the issue.

He said: “We are looking at introducing one licence for the city region so you don’t have one area that takes all the money.

“There will also be some form of requirement to have some level of knowledge of the area they are operating in.

“We want to cut-down on drivers cherry picking fares and moonlighting.”

He said the proposed new licence would also combat the issue of drivers picking up licences in outlying city-region boroughs before plying their trade in the city.

He said: “We don’t have the funding at the moment to pay for enforcement for these drivers, we are paying for issues that haven’t been caused by us as a council.

“The extra money we could make on the licences could be used for better enforcement.”

Earlier this year, Knowsley Council had to suspend the issuing of new licences as it struggled to deal with a deluge of new applications.

This came after the council removed the ‘street knowledge’ section of its driver licence application – which critics said made it to easy for people to get qualified.

At the time there were suggestions that would-be drivers were ‘scamming’ Knowsley Council by going into the borough, applying for a licence and then heading to Manchester or Liverpool to ‘work for Uber.’

A spokesman for Uber said: “It’s common industry practice for drivers licensed in one jurisdiction to carry out trips in other jurisdictions as long as they are pre-booked and dispatched from the operator’s licence they are registered to.

“Private-hire drivers that use the Uber app are fully licensed independent contractors and are free to log in and drive when and where they choose. Particularly in Merseyside, we see considerable demand for trips between Liverpool and Sefton, Knowsley and Wirral as people are opting to book an Uber instead of taking their private cars.”

I suppose it's sort of, on a limited scale, following the Law Commission's proposals for a national PH license.

The problem is/was always funding for enforcement, who does the enforcement, and regional requirements.

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IDFIMH

Yes, I suppose to a degree the Law Commission facilitating cross-border work was introducing a more national licensing system by the back door

Of course, at least the megazones being proposed are more about dumbing up the system - wasn't the Law Commission's preference for a dumbed down national licence?

But, as you say in another thread, it will all probably require Westminster legislation for much progress to be made, so I won't hold my breath

That's one of the reasons I got the hump with the Law Commission.

Along with them bottling the taxi restrictions issue.

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IDFIMH

Didn't really pay too much attention, particularly since it had no bearing on the Scottish legislation.

But apart from three-year licences, all it achieved was the cross-border mess?

What a waste of time and effort