Taxi Driver Online

When a council in Scotland issues a tariff sheet, and it says that the fare is the maximum that can be charged, could you legally set you meter at a lower rate???? so you will be charging below the maximum, and can a council force you to have your meter set to there tariffs.

yes i think you can as long as you dont charge more than the councial have set in there fare table

I think the council can insist on you having your meter set at their rate, but they can't stop you offering a set discount.

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IDFIMH

The council is insisting on the meter being set to there rate, and that it is on from point A to B but I will have to give a discount and the meter will be all wrong, the totals wont tally so it would be essayer to set the meter to my tariff
The main reason being is the council has now insisted on calender controlled meters and at midnight there is an extra £1.00 to go on an already extortionate fare a 2 mile run will be £5.60 before midnight and £6.60 after and the council wont allow the £1.00 to be put on the extras button

At the risk of repeating what sussex has written.

WILL YOU PLEASE READ WHAT HE WRITES!

Your local authority will set a maximum fare, this means you cannot charge more that what they say, but are free to charge less.

(there is case law but JD will supply you with this if you ask nicely, and if he aint got it, contact the STF, (dont contact that guy in Carlisle because he talks sh*te and will only advise if your a member and English or Welsh (although he's got it on disc )

Last week (and forgive me if I am incorrect) you were going apeshit about going PH and charging your own rate.

Myself, and from memory my best buddy JD, asked if that was necessary when you could do the same job with all the freedoms of the HC and (since I havent really followed the thread) you didnt answer (although you may have done.

Now, if you have a problem, I am sure JD will give you all the legal advice you need.

Now get on with the bleedin job.

Captain cab

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

I can see where he's coming from though, because here although many of the firms and individual drivers do discounts they tend not to use the meter while doing so because the customes can get stroppy if the meter goes on. There's no rule here to say that you have to use the meter .But the discounted prices here tend to be fixed, but since Skippy seems to want to just run at a lower rate then obviously calculating the fare won't be easy if his meter is set at a higher rate.

One way round it would be to make up a table showing the council fare and the fare that he wants to charge, so he could just compare the fare on the meter to the one on his tables and charge that fare ,and at least this shows the customers that their getting a discount.

Another way that the PH cars around here used to use was to use the mileometer and have a table with the fares for each distance on it, so even if the meter was on he would basically just ignore it.

As for the totals, most of the drivers here keep job sheets and write each run down, so that would be the way round the meter not showing the correct tally.

But here most of the drivers prefer to keep the council rates on the meter because they can use that for the rank work while offering discounts for the phone work.

AS for the legal position, as I said the cars up here have to have the meters set to the council rate, but they don't have to use the meters.

Yes captain I was going ape about going PH, but not without a fight, If I can stay hack and have the meter rate that I want I will do so.
What right has any council in the country got to tell you what you should charge or display on your meter as long as its below what is on the tariff sheet.
Pubs and clubs are licenced by the council but do they insist that they all charge the same price for a pint??? NO there are loads of other businesses that are licenced, like a window cleaner does the council insist that he or she charges £5.00 for cleaning a 12 inch pain of glass???? NO
so what right have they to tell me what to charge and how to run my own business that I have run as a one man band for 25 years.
I know I can discount but its far essayer if the total at the passengers destination is whats on the meter

And yes captain I did take note of what Sussex said and I followed the link and contacted them and was refereed to the Scottish taxi federation, but they aper to be building a new site and there is only a phone number to contact them there,but it appears from what I have seen posted on this site, there wont be much hope unless you can enlighten me

I suppose it all comes back to why taxi fares are regulated in the first place, and the mechanisms in place to do so. To that extent your council probably wants to discourage:

- taxis working without the meter on;

- taximeters showing different fares.

So they know they can prevent that but can't prevent you discounting because of the law, but I daresay they would if they could.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Why not use the meter and put a notice in the car offering a 90% discount the punter will be more than happy they will be able to see what your giving away on every job. Personally the higher a coucil sets a tarrif the better I like it fuel goes up licensing goes up insurance goes up and if we do not have fares rises we just end up working longer. We are not a charity transport sevice stop thinking we are and start getting what you are entitled to.

Happy? I think they'd be ecstatic




I'd forget about the 90% discounts then

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Skippy,

I cannot comment about the Scottish Law on the issue because I dont know enough about it.

You ask what right any council has to tell you what to charge.

Local Authorities in England and Wales have a power to set fares usually under section 65 of the Local Government Misc Prov Act 1976, although byelaws under Section 68 of the Town Police Clauses Act (TPCA) 1847 also give them the power to fix fares.

Section 58 of the TPCA makes it an offence to charge more than the metered rate.

There is an additional argument that in theory the local authority could make a condition where it was an offence to charge below the metered rate. This argument could be to prevent trouble at hackney carriage stands etc. Whether the public would benefit is obviously another question.

section 54 of the TPCA allows a price to be agreed in advance of the journey, once such an agreement has been made, it is an offence for the driver of proprietor to demand more.

The court case you require is R v Liverpool City Council ex p Curzon Ltd 1983.

I think the case evolved around Liverpool CC bringing in 2 tarrifs when Curzon Ltd had mechanical meters and couldnt get the two tariffs to work on their equipment.

The therefore made a case that so long as they charged below the rate it was allowable.

The case went to Judicial review (I think)

In the end the judge basically stated it would be an offence to charge more than the rate of fare, not less.

In so far as the accuracy of the meter was concerned the judge stated the driver is entitled to charge what is displayed on his meter, If the driver is going to charge less, say, half the rate allowed in the table of fares, then half the rate is what the passenger will expect to see on the meter.

Having stated that, the council up there may have made a condition of license not permitting it!

JD is the man to help you from here on in, as I would think he knows about the case and may have a copy he could put on here?



I would advise you to ring the STF for advice, as what I offer may not be correct in Scotland.

Hope this is useful

regards

Captain Cab

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Skippy,

I cannot comment about the Scottish Law on the issue because I dont know enough about it.

You ask what right any council has to tell you what to charge.

Local Authorities in England and Wales have a power to set fares usually under section 65 of the Local Government Misc Prov Act 1976, although byelaws under Section 68 of the Town Police Clauses Act (TPCA) 1847 also give them the power to fix fares.

Section 58 of the TPCA makes it an offence to charge more than the metered rate.

There is an additional argument that in theory the local authority could make a condition where it was an offence to charge below the metered rate. This argument could be to prevent trouble at hackney carriage stands etc. Whether the public would benefit is obviously another question.

section 54 of the TPCA allows a price to be agreed in advance of the journey, once such an agreement has been made, it is an offence for the driver of proprietor to demand more.

The court case you require is R v Liverpool City Council ex p Curzon Ltd 1983.

I think the case evolved around Liverpool CC bringing in 2 tarrifs when Curzon Ltd had mechanical meters and couldnt get the two tariffs to work on their equipment.

The therefore made a case that so long as they charged below the rate it was allowable.

The case went to Judicial review (I think)

In the end the judge basically stated it would be an offence to charge more than the rate of fare, not less.

In so far as the accuracy of the meter was concerned the judge stated the driver is entitled to charge what is displayed on his meter, If the driver is going to charge less, say, half the rate allowed in the table of fares, then half the rate is what the passenger will expect to see on the meter.

Having stated that, the council up there may have made a condition of license not permitting it!

JD is the man to help you from here on in, as I would think he knows about the case and may have a copy he could put on here?



I would advise you to ring the STF for advice, as what I offer may not be correct in Scotland.

Hope this is useful

regards

Captain Cab

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

The case was added to the TDO archive in April. If it is of any assistance, you can find it here.

http://taxi-driver.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtop ... ght=curzon

As far as I am aware there has never been a case in any part of the UK in respect of a proprietor wanting to keep the old tariff. The Curzon case is about having to change the actual manual meter to one of a Calender type meter.

If you read between the lines the judgement is basically saying that anyone who wants to keep the previous tariff can do so but the court did not have to adjudicate on that matter. All they had to determine under the relevant section was if the meter was working properly?

It transpires that just because a meter doesn't show the fare as stipulated in the fare chart, it doesn't mean that the meter isn't mechanically sound?

It is an interesting case but if anyone wanted to keep their meter at the old rate they should ask the council if that is acceptable? The alternative is the council suspending your license, which means you will have to go to court in order to remove the suspension.

If a person declines to change his meter they are most definitely going to end up in court, one way or the other. The most logical outcome would be to accept the tariff increase and discount accordingly. You could always ask the council to have your own lower tariff put on the meter, perhaps on tariff 4 which could work manually overriding the council tariff. However I doubt any council would agree to that.


Regards

JD

I knew you'd have it

I think the judgement would be persuasive to the council to allow skippy to carry on with the old rate?

Particularly;

If the driver is only going to charge, say, half the rate allowed in the table of fares, then half that rate is what the passenger will expect to see on the meter. Similarly, as with the drivers of Curzon Limited's cabs, if they are only going to charge day rates at night, then what the meter should show is the fare according to the day rate.

and

I see nothing in the Acts which gives power to the council to prevent such waiver. There must have been, during the 146 years since 1847, many thousands of occasions when passengers have discovered that the fare exceeds the amount of money they are carrying and drivers have let them off the difference. Waiver in similar circumstances is commonplace in many areas of life. In my judgment, short of a contractual restriction, there is nothing to prevent a driver from doing this if he wants.

regards

Captain Cab

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin