Taxi Driver Online

This was on a BBC Scotland current affairs TV programme last night. It's about PH 'pirating' in Glasgow. Nothing particularly new for regulars on here, but makes a change to see the issue discussed on TV, and not just a couple of minutes on something really obscure.

The piece can be viewed on the BBC's website/iPlayer (second link below), it's the first item on the programme, and covers the first ten minutes or so.

No real need to read the accompanying article below if you watch the programme, and if you don't fancy watching it the piece below covers most of the ground.

Taxi drivers urge crackdown on 'pirates'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... t-45408847

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b ... 2-06092018

Taxi drivers in Glasgow have called for a crackdown on "pirate" cabs which illegally pick up off the street without prior booking.

Black cab and private hire drivers warned that the pirates were threatening their livelihood and putting the public at risk.

The Unite union said it was "deeply concerned" by the illegal hires.

Glasgow City Council called on the police to report pirate cabbies to the prosecution service.

It said prosecutors should take the situation more seriously and impose larger penalties.

While public hire black cabs are allowed to take people who have not booked, private hire cars are restricted to passengers with a pre-arranged booking.

Unite Scotland told BBC Scotland's Timeline programme that there had been a boom in illegal pick-ups, especially in Glasgow but also in Dundee and Aberdeen.

It said the pirate drivers were breaching cab licensing restrictions and invalidating car insurance by working in this way.

'I'll drive you to the cash machine'

Ellis asked taxi drivers if they would take her fare

Ellis Horne, a BBC Timeline reporter, investigated how many private hire cars would be willing to pick up her fare from the street on a busy Saturday night.

She said: "I approached private hire cars and asked if they could take me home without prior booking.

"In less than an hour, six said 'yes' and they all wanted to charge more than what I would normally pay - about one-and-a-half times the normal cost of the journey.

"Some drivers were a bit hesitant but it didn't take long before they decided it was fine to take me."

She added: "I did get told 'no' on several occasions so we should highlight not all drivers were willing to break the private hire guidelines.

"One driver I told I had been 'waiting forever' and he said 'okay no problem I can take you but it's £35 cash up-front, I can take you to the cash machine if you have no cash'."

'Not far enough'

Unite's Scottish Secretary Pat Rafferty said: "It's clear the current deterrents are not effective and are being circumvented by individuals.

"We now need to consider stronger measures including criminal sanctions in order to deal with this problem."

Councillor Alex Wilson said Glasgow City Council had increased sanctions on drivers caught illegally plying for trade.

He said: "We are talking three or four weeks at a time for a first offence, a couple of months for a second offence and then a full suspension for the remainder of your licence."

But the convener of the licensing regulatory committee called on the police to report illegal cab drivers to the procurator fiscal so they could have a points sanction imposed on their driving licence.

Councillor Alex Wilson thinks the procurator fiscal service is "not doing enough"

Mr Wilson said: "I don't think they are going far enough and I think between ourselves, Unite and Police Scotland, we need to send a message to the procurator fiscal that we would prefer to see a points system given to drivers who are caught."

The black cab driver

Steven Grant from Unite the Union is also a black cab driver

Steven Grant is cab section secretary at Unite and drives a public hire taxi.

He said: "We believe supply is now way in excess of demand.

"Glasgow has always had vastly more private hire vehicles (PHVs) per head of population than every other city in Scotland and the UK, with the exception of London."

Mr Grant thinks the situation is having a big economic impact on both taxi drivers and private hire drivers.

He said: "We are out there legitimately working to the conditions of our licences and we have these people - opportunists - sitting waiting to rip off the public.

"Everyone is okay with competition, but what we need is everyone to work legitimately.

"It is extremely dangerous because you have someone that is quite willing to break their licence conditions, to invalidate their insurance and there is scope there for further crime."

The private hire driver

Joe, a private hire driver, denies ever taking money from a pirate hire.

But he can see why drivers might be tempted by propositions on the street.

Joe (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) said: "Unfortunately it's one of the darker sides of taxiing out there.

"A couple of times I have taken someone home where I felt they were perhaps vulnerable.

"I mean, we have a duty of care, we will help, we will assist where we can.

"The temptation is always there. It's a fine line between greed and survival.

"At the end of the day, if the driver is struggling to feed kids, and put electricity in the meter, if somebody walks up to them and says 'here's £80', they think if these pirate drivers are going to take the money, why not use these people who are willing to throw money at me, to earn the money that I've lost?

"But really, drivers who are doing this at the moment, illegally, it's point blank disgusting."

'Illegal taxi touting'

Police Scotland said they would continue to work with the council's licensing department to tackle the problem.

Ch Insp Gillian Norrie said: "This is a licensing issue and as such we have been liaising with Unite and Glasgow City Council, who have taxi enforcement officers within their licensing department.

"We rely on incidents being reported to us and we encourage people to contact us if they have witnessed illegal taxi touting or have any information relating to illegal taxis.

"People should be aware of the risks of using an illegal taxi which includes drivers not being vetted or having any insurance cover. Licensed taxi drivers are vetted to ensure they are fit and proper persons to convey the public around."

Doubt that somehow. Proportionately more than Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh, but otherwise probably similar to most large UK cities

why do you doubt that somehow?

i wonder what is the ratio of p/h to hc is in most major cities ???

here in glagow its about 2.5=1 p/h versus hack,fast approaching 3=1,i wonder if there is a table of p/h to hc available to get a proper comparison,would be interesting to see what other major cities numbers are,and even better numbers before and after the poober infestation

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

Haven't got up to date figures - these are about 20 years old

Manchester HC 733 PH 2,896 (3.95:1)
Leeds HC 400 PH 2,700 (6.75:1)
Birmingham HC 1,019 PH 3,541 (3.47:1)
Bradford HC 214 PH 1,506 (7.04:1)

Of course, some cities will be worse than that in terms of ratios, and some better, but these are among the top half dozen most populated cities in England outside London.

And suspect it's worse now in terms of ratios, even ignoring the Uber effect.

I think the three Scottish cities other than Glasgow are oddballs for one reason or another. For example, I think Dundee deregulated HC numbers and there were effectively zero PH for a while - all you needed was a 10-year-old Cavalier for a hackney plate, and same knowledge test for PH, so why bother running a PH? So although HC numbers are now reregulated, the numbers overall are stuck with that legacy.

Up to date figures for England are here - not the first link, which is an summary of the whole country. The second link is to some zip files, which I suspect contain the stats for each council area, but they're in an odd format and I can't open them

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... gland-2017

thank you,ive had to repl ybecause there is no thank you button on the posts
im gobsmacked at some of these figures

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

The way most taxi demand surveys view unlicensed PH pick ups is that that is clear evidence of latent unmet demand.

So if hoards of folks are approaching PH parked up looking for a taxi home, then the council should be looking to increase the availability of black cabs.

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IDFIMH

which leads to deregulation which leads to drivers working long hours and complaining of too many cabs

Q.E.D.

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

Why?

Unless there are loads of prospective drivers, hiding behind a wall somewhere, it wont made any difference as the drivers are out here working already.

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IDFIMH

Convert the PH fleet to hackney and you immediately get a drop in standards and lots of cherry picking and other problems followed by a massive recruitment drive by the PH firms as they will lose "settle" and want to make it up

we've seen this happen in a lot of places over the years net result an overall increase in the fleet without an increase in the size of the market

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

Apart from your manor, where it appears you can't get enough drivers.

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IDFIMH

we have about 100 hackneys for a town of 22000 population plus 3 PH's but about a quarter of those work PH in Peterborough and hackney in Stamford when it's T2 late at night

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

Just doing some number crunching with the latest DfT statistics - one good thing with the DfT offering spreadsheets is that you can do a bit of quick number crunching to get the HC to PH ratio for every LA in England (assuming you can use a spreadsheet, of course ).

Anyway, it throws up some really odd numbers. For example, some more rural authorities have dozens of PH for each HC. Suspect this is because there's very little public hire work, so no one really bothers running HCs.

Some odd results for the more urban areas are easily explained though.

Wolverhampton has almost 34 PH to every one HC, but obviously most of them go there for an easy path to licensing, and then work elsewhere.

Sefton is much the same principle - it's an urban area, and has almost 14 PH to each HC, but as I recall it a lot of these PH will be working for Delta in Liverpool and across Merseyside, which obviously skews the figures.

Of the bigger cities, the ratio in Leeds has worsened slightly from 20 years ago, with around 8 PH to every HC. Bradford is almost off the scale at 14:1, and I doubt there's a huge number of those PH working elsewhere - in fact, isn't there a lot of cars from other area now working in Bradford as PH, so the ratio is possibly even worse than 14:1

On the other hand, Manchester has improved slightly from 20 years ago, and Birmingham is much the same. Don't know about Manchester, but Birmingham apparently chockablock with Wolverhampton-plated PH, so again this will distort the figures.

B&H has more hackneys than PH.

But PH from elsewhere working on Uber might put PH in the lead.

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IDFIMH