Taxi Driver Online

County Council appeals to taxi companies to help with transport to Covid-19 testing site

Lincolnshire County Council has begun looking for taxi companies which may be able to transport suspected COVID-19 patients for testing.

The new drive-thru testing site at the Lincolnshire Showground has come under criticism from some local people for access difficulties.

Anita Ruffle, Head of Transport Services at Lincolnshire County Council, said: “We have begun looking into the possibility of providing transport to the temporary test site at Lincolnshire Showground for those who would otherwise be unable to get there.

“Alongside home testing and mobile testing, this is just another option we are assessing to make sure key workers who needs tests can access them.”

Vladimir Kubjatko, who owns the family-run A2B Cars, was one of those approached initially.

He said he was thinking of offering his services to the council, but could not tick yes because they would need more details over the scheme due to the availability of drivers.

The company has its own valet bay, which it can use to disinfect vehicles and may even be able to offer it to other companies for a small charge.

The testing site opened over the weekend and is part of a series of solutions aiming to meet a 1,000 test a day target.

Two of the existing sites have now closed.

Tony McGinty, Assistant Director of Public Health at Lincolnshire County Council, said capacity was still being ramped up – helped by the military operation of mobile units going between Boston, Skegness and Grantham.

He said the target might not be met initially, but he was confident it would be as bosses geared up to tackle people without symptoms in care homes and on the NHS front-lines.

He said even if lockdown ended, without a vaccine ‘we will be testing a lot of people for some time to come yet’.

However, he said that despite still seeing a significant number of cases and deaths the county was ‘holding our own’.

He said the county could still avoid a second surge of cases as long as people did not get ‘demob happy’ as the lockdown continued.

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IDFIMH

Now if the work is going to be paid work, not free work, then provided drivers and punters wear masks and gloves it could be a good source of work.

If I worked that far up north ( ) I would be interested.

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IDFIMH

You would think they would be looking for vehicles with a separate passenger compartment and two metres of distance between the driver and passenger. For the safety of the driver. You would think. You know something like a TX4 or an E7, that sort of thing.

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Former taxi driver

And if you call me Northern again, I’ll head down to yours and jump up and down on your soft southern belly.

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Former taxi driver

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IDFIMH

luckily being at the southern end of the county I haven't been asked but if they think I'm doing a 3 hour round trip using £15 worth of fuel for Nothing they can think again

Can't understand the access issues though because they get them in and out for the annual show ok and that would be far busier I would think

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

Indeed, and I'd travel to Dundee, Glenrothes or Kirkcaldy to do that kind of work if the jobs were decent enough (can't see much like that happening locally).

But suspect it would be relatively short runs and a lot of cleaning required between each run - the article talks about disinfecting and that the firm has a specialist 'bay' for cleaning purposes

So can't see it happening, and if the jobs were quite good then probably plenty of drivers interested anyway.

An awful lot of fibbery going on with A2B taxis in Lincoln. Listed premises are actually a council house. They claim to have a hundred plus cars on the books, more like four, maybe five.
But here’s an idea for county councils everywhere. They are paying drivers to sit on their butts and not doing the school run. Why not insist the drivers do two days a week doing those sort of jobs for the council to actually earn the money they are getting? They could be heroes, as Bowie sang.

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Former taxi driver

Do not think you can operate a private hire business from a Council house and most probably you would be restricted to not more than 2 vehicles.

very common in Lincolnshire

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