Taxi Driver Online

The answer is NOBODY ! You only need an Operators licence if you use private hire vehicles to fulfill your bookings. A firm can use only 'out of town' hackney carriages to cover their work, thereby paying no operator licence fees and having no requirement to keep records; a hackney carriage does not have to keep records of private bookings and the unlicensed radio company are beholden to no one. Of course they could not call themselves Joe Bloggs Private Hire they would have to call themselves Joe Bloggs Taxis.

They don't have to use out of town Hackneys. They can use their own Hackneys for this work.

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Grandad,

Indeed they can, however larger cities that attract drivers with the 'honey pot' effect do tend to have WAV fleets which are expensive to run and purchase usually leading to higher fares than local private hire firms thereby leaving the operator unable to compete on price alone, quite a key point for an operator who wants to expand as more customers require more drivers to service them and more radio rents for the operator. Also you will not get the same radio rent from a hackney carriage working in its own area, certainly in Manchester private hire radio rent is approximately 4 times as much as hackney carriage radio rent. Add to the above the fact that you can go to another area plate any old piece of junk car with just an MOT once a year, no age limits and above all else enforcement officers that are possibly hundreds of miles away makes your drivers costs lower than his locally licensed ph colleagues whose car can be no more than 7 years old and who has 3 tests a year, so you can cut fares to the bone, if I was a private hire operator I would be thinking about giving my licence back so saving me hundreds if not thousands of pounds in fees and all those record keeping headaches.

You aint exactly telling us something we dont already know my friend.

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

Methinks the Law Commission will change most of the above.

But they will change a lot more which will make it easier for cross border using bog standard PH vehicles.

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IDFIMH

Who issues radio licences now, who checks interference by the signals?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

And they can use nine and nine-plus seat vehicles without PH licences as do many in Brum.

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

Those vehicles come under a different licensing system. They always have.

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Grandad,

That would be this system

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchesterevening ... a_bus.html

Your bold typeface quotation should be taken in the context of the preceding part of the sentence as indicated by the semi-colon.

Possibly, although they seem to be unsure about whether to license hackney radio dispatchers and as to the licensing of cars as hackneys in one area and using them for private hire in another; the Law Commission do not seem to have a legislative approach to prevent this, their only remedy would seem to be that national minimum standards for private hire vehicles and hackney carriages will prevent this from happening because no area would have lower standards than another, they have not considered the cost of the licences and whether Area A is significantly cheaper than Area B.

Ah Captain your optimism is inspiring

They may well do, but if properly licensed or not as the case may be, what stops them being used on a PH system with drivers that are not licensed under the LG[MP] Act 1976?

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

That's my point exactly.

I have a feeling that the LC are not up to speed on this loophole as it has never been mentionaed in any of their roadshows or meetings.

I hope they don't miss this one.

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

I am not sure that I have got this yet. Are you saying that 9-16 passenger vehicles are being used as private hire vehicles?
9-16 passenger vehicles used for payment have to be run by a person with a PCV operators license, driven by a driver with a PCV drivers license and operated under the Traffic Commisioners regulations.

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Grandad,