MR T wrote:
Everyone has to abide by the law. The council, drivers and the public. The law states you need a licence to drive a hackney and a different licence to drive a ph, and another one to drive a bus, but nowhere does it say that a ph and hackney licence should be combined. If a licencing officer was to use his own car and insurance when out checking on drivers and was to be prosecuted and found guilty of not having the correct insurance i.e. business insurance, would he then lose his job? I don't think so, so what is fit and proper? It is whatever suits the licencing officer at the time. So under those rules if a ph driver decides to surrender his ph badge, the what can the council do. If he decides to take out a hackney badge they can't prosecute him, and in reality he will still be picking up off the road but correctly licenced.
Don't want to get bogged down with the legality of dual badges (up here, if you have a taxi badge it automatically covers you to drive PH, and that's quite clear in the legislation) or the conditions/by-laws stuff - will leave that to those who know about these things.
But in principle I find it difficult to see how someone banned under one code could be considered fit and proper under the other code, even if the applicable rules don't apply to the other code.
For example, if a PH driver lost his badge for plying for hire, or an HC driver lost his badge for cherry-picking/overcharging, would the LA entertain an application from the driver for a badge under the other code, even if the rules he'd broken are irrelevant under the other code?
I suspect not - it's not about the individual rules, it's about principles of honesty and abiding by rules more generally.
Are there any real world examples of drivers being banned under one code but being granted a badge under the other? I suspect not.
So to that degree it shouldn't be a problem if a driver loses a dual badge and thus the right to drive under both codes, because if the badges were separate then they wouldn't be able to lose one and apply for the other anyway.
And if a driver has different badges under both codes then I would imagine that if he lost one badge (for plying for hire in a PH, or overcharging in an HC, say) he'd automatically lose the other as well.