Taxi Driver Online

No doubt some on here will welcome this, but you'd think the council would have some sort of system that allows for the easy retrieval of information like this


Mystery of taxi driver complaints in Herefordshire

https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/2408 ... fordshire/

THE council has said it doesn't know how many complaints have been made against taxi drivers in Herefordshire as its system cannot access the information.

In response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Hereford Times for the number of complaints made about taxi drivers in the county, the council said that its "reporting systems" were unable to find the data.

It said that manually searching for the information, across 3,212 files and 23,273 emails, would take at least 1,043 hours.

Responding to an FOI request which asked for the number and type of complaints against taxi drivers, the number and type of actions taken, and the number of referrals to other authorities over the last five years, Herefordshire Council wrote: "This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within 18 hours.

"Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested officers would need to manually check individual files for this information.

"An initial search has shown that 3,212 files and 23,273 emails would need to be checked for this information.

"The details would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures and details requested could be calculated. This would take at least 1,043 hours."

Under the FOI Act, public bodies can refuse requests if they estimate that responding will take over 18 hours.

The council said that the request could be narrowed down to allow it to be responded to in an appropriate amount of time, and the Hereford Times has approached the information governance department regarding this.

I'd guess what they're saying here is that every file and email that the licensing department has received or sent would have to be looked at

You'd think they'd have a better system than that that allows for the easier retrieval of the kind of information requested

Or maybe it just means that they get so many complaints it would take 1,043 hours to list them all

I smell the excrement of herefords finest Bulls. Most councils have this info available to the councillors

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

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You would think so but our Council do not report anything about complaints to the Councillors and the Councillors never ask.
At our drivers meeting last week the licensing chair had no idea that the changes to the best practice guidense announced in November means that the policy needs to be updated. The licensing team had not told him. I think they were trying to ignore the changes until I pointed them out.

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Grandad,
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Really?

They must list complaints somehow, else how to they know when the complaint has been investigated/dealt with?

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IDFIMH

If only someone could invent a 'search' function. Similar to the ones found almost everywhere and on every mail server.

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IDFIMH

Don't know if that would work, Sussex, unless each email or file was tagged something like 'customer complaint' or whatever.

I mean, it's maybe like searching for something on here in the last year or so - customer complaints could cover a wide range of scenarios, so what do you search for to encompass everything, while not missing anything out?

And, of course, such a search would also throw up lots of irrelevant results, which would have to be looked at in order to sift them out.

Of course, finding some would be easy enough, but not if a complete, comprehensive and accurate list was required.

On the other hand, you'd think they'd have some sort of list or categorization of customer complaints, but it looks like they don't

It's maybe a bit like my main email account, which contains thousands of emails dating back to 2010 when I opened the account. So, for example, it's easy enough to use the search function to find emails using fairly distinct words like 'squirrel', 'swan' or 'sparrow'.

But finding every email that mentioned any kind of animal, bird, or wildlife would be a whole lot more difficult...

However, if I organised them by category ('animals and birds', say, or 'taxi stuff') then it would be a bit easier to retrieve them. But they're all just in one huge lump dating back 14 years

Well they've actually responded to the FOI request, but not clear why they're now able to do so

And the piece below is more about the FOI hoohah than the complaints per se, so to a degree it all seems a bit pointless. And, as the piece says, there's no info available on how the complaints were resolved...


Revealed: number of complaints about Hereford taxi drivers

https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/2413 ... i-drivers/

THE council has revealed how many complaints have been made against taxi drivers in Herefordshire, after it previously claimed its system could not access this information.

But it still has not been able to say what happened after the allegations were made.

In response to a Freedom of Information request by the Hereford Times for the number of complaints made about taxi drivers in the county, the council said that its "reporting systems" were unable to find the data.

After the HT submitted a second request, the council revealed that there have been 85 complaints in the last five years.

Originally, the council said that manually searching for this information, along with details of the outcomes of the complaints, would take at least 1,043 hours and would involve looking through 3,212 files and 23,273 emails.

The council has still been unable to provide information on the outcomes of the 85 complaints, but did break down the types of complaints made.

Five of the complaints were about a driver smoking, eight were about abusive or rude drivers and 11 concerned "inappropriate behaviour", while a total of 27 complaints were made about drivers overcharging, refusing fares, or being unlicensed.

There were also 34 reports of dangerous driving which the council say were reported to police.

Responding to the original FOI request, which was refused, the council had said: "This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within 18 hours.

"Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested officers would need to manually check individual files for this information.

"An initial search has shown that 3,212 files and 23,273 emails would need to be checked.

"The details would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated, this would take at least 1,043 hours."

Under the FOI Act, public bodies can refuse requests if they estimate that responding will take 18 hours or more.

There's a fancy pants graph that can be viewed half way down the page below, but it's not a graphic, so can't be made to appear on here

But which illustrates that the numbers are so small that they're really 'statistically insignificant' thus you can't really say much about trends, or whatever.

And the graph includes the lockdown years, therefore...

Likewise, as regards stuff like overcharging in particular, it's impossible to tell whether the complaints actually had merit. Like comparing the numbers, any conclusions reached could be of 'spurious' accuracy, to use a word that's often used in the context of statistics etc

https://archive.is/633WH