Taxi Driver Online

Not much to see here, and even the headline is a bit, er, something or other

Those 'taxi drivers' and their 'private hire' licences, eh?

And casual readers might think it means an individual driver has been revoked 16 times

Pretty unlikely, and to be fair, strictly speaking the apostrophe is in the right place - if it had been a single driver revoked 16 times then it would have said "taxi driver's"

But in the days of texting and the like, I'd guess most readers of the Ipswich Star wouldn't appreciate that. And think I was 40-something before working it all out

Or, at least I think I've worked it all out


Ipswich taxi drivers' private hire licence revoked 16 times

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/2510 ... -16-times/

Ipswich Borough Council has been carrying out its duty to review private hire licences and, since the start of 2020, has revoked licences of 16 drivers.

The local authority has a duty to ensure passenger safety when handing taxi and private hire licences.

As a result, in the past five years, it has reviewed and revoked the licences of 16 cabbies.

While some have come after DVLA issues and medical conditions, many others have come after concerns raised by the police and other authorities.

This includes one revocation which took place in March this year, where a driver was accused of "four serious allegations of dishonesty".

Additionally, there were three incidents last year where Suffolk police arrested or charged drivers with serious offences, which led to their licences being revoked.

A borough council spokesperson said: “The council is responsible for ensuring, as far as possible, the safety of the public when travelling in an Ipswich Borough Council licensed taxi or private hire vehicle.

"To achieve this, we ensure that all licensed taxi and private hire drivers remain fit and proper to continue to hold a licence."

...and although the article specifically refers to a 'duty to review private hire licences' the rest of the piece is a bit vague, and I wouldn't be surprised if in fact the article is about the whole trade - I mean, why only cover PH? (Unless, of course, the HCs are whiter-than-white )

There's also a fancy graph available via the link. Fancy in that it's some kind of embedded graph rather than a graphic, so can't be posted here.

But not fancy in that it doesn't even have the numbers on the axis, so it's really just comparing each in a comparative sense.

And it's also titled 'Number of cab driver suspensions', so whether it's actually about HCDs and/or PHDs, or about the revocations in the rest of the article, or actually about suspensions, isn't clear

(To be fair, although it's not immediately obvious, if you put your cursor over each bar on the graph, it does show the actual numbers. But they're so small (from one to five per annum over the past few years) then they're really statistically insignificant in the sense of drawing graphs and drawing any conclusions etc.

But if it's all pro rata, then presumably this year is going to be off the scale (literally!) since the 2025 figure just covers the first three months or so

So that's 16 in five years, including those that have been revoked for medical reasons, and some due to DVLA issues.

Not really a lot, and certainly not a lot for the local rag to run a story on it.

Other than maybe a good news story along the lines of the trade is 99.9% safe, and those that are a bit iffy are being routed out of it.

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IDFIMH