Taxi Driver Online

Ryburn Taxibus (Slaithwaite) Ltd have now signed a partnership agreement with West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive to develop
Pennine Taxibus scheme, in the Slaithwaite/Colne Valley and Ripponden/Calder Valley areas.

Restricted by numbers Kirklees council have allocated 2 special plates for the services, Calderdale Council are not restricted by numbers and applications will be furnished in the normal way.

A legal agreement will be put in place with Kirklees Council to prevent these special licenses being used for rank work, although Calderdale council don't require this a written undertaking, will be given that the vehicles will not be used on taxi ranks.

In return both councils have agreed that the special vehicles will be allowed to have the Burgundy and white colours of the Leeds based experimental bus group "Metro Connect", who will franchise the scheme.

The experiment will be based on teasing motorists from their cars onto public transport, and providing rural services where provision is scarce or non existent and taking them to rail, bus routes doctors and shopping, and possibly services to groups like farmers going to markets.

There are talks in advance stages for through transferable tickets to bus and rail particularly First Group services, which are predominant in both areas.

The schemes sponsored have studied other schemes country wide to implement best practice, and learn from experiences of other operators.

special combined ticket machines and meters built by HAC will be used and consultations with their developers are ongoing.

The buses will have a booking system jointly developed by the company and Mercury, using up to date technology.

The vehicles themselves will be Renault Master medium wheelbases incorporating a tail lift for wheelchair access, but will also designed for helping people with zimmer frames.

the headrests will have special bright yellow handles to assist the partially sighted, and the vehicles will be roomy to assist people with a range of disabilities.

the doors will be driver assisted and drivers will offer assistance where necessary to assist with transfer to bus or train on a seamless service.

Director General of Ryburn Taxibus Susan Heseltine said "negotiations have gone like a dream, having partners like West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive who have been voted the best transport authority in the country for the last 3 years on the trot, and have Beacon Status in most areas has been invaluable, they have dealt with all negotiations with through ticket operators, and have dealt with both councils, and the traffic commission"

No mean task is the round of negotiations with the transport authority and suppliers Led ably and superbly by Geoff Fielden from Wharf Taxis has brought us to a leading scheme which we feel will be very successful.

The tender negotiations after the documents were submitted, were on few occasions fraught, and the scheme has slipped its timescale as officers and Mr Fielden took degrees of caution, at times to ensure things were exactly right.

"Ryburn Taxibus have offered to buy a stake in Wharf Taxis of 40%, and invited Mr Fielden a seat on the board, I am relieved to say both proposals have been accepted, we must have secured the services of the best strategic person in the taxi trade this side of Oxford"

Services will commence late this year early next year, and planning jointly with senior transport officers continue.

Mrs Heseltine continued "my experience with Local Government prior to this has been fraught, I have learned much from Mr Fieldens style of tabling papers and expressions of preference, and inviting officers to consider points, which have led to situations where both sides leaned over backwards to accommodate each other,and the information tabled from both sides have been mind boggling"

Wharf Taxis is a tiny and very well led undertaking, I have no Qualms at all in joining up with them.

The scheme is now having special connector facilities built at both Sowerby Bridge and Slaithwaite stations, discussions are proposed on other initiatives involving passenger care at both sites.

announcement Ends.

Good luck Wharfy.

But I hope those vans wont be plying for hire.

_________________
IDFIMH

they will ply for hire but on a fixed timetable on single fares only

thanks for the luck, deep down you are a gentleman.

Don't think this chap thinks much of taxi-bus.

http://www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/NEWSTH06.html

a couple of points here
firstly as the article said the firm was invited to tender.

secondaly the stupidity of him giving the buses so much press coverage will only make things worse

and thirdly nobody will deny its a rip roaring success as to admit its floundering does nothing for the transport authority or the bus company

but take it from me they are nowhere near running full, the reason for the 25% drop is the lousy summer and lack of tourism in these parts this year
we are all running under last year.

we have had a look at these services, they could and should be doing better.

First of all I would like to congratulate Geoff on the reference made to him by Ryburn Taxibus company.

Having read the article I have one or two legal reservations about the way Kirklees Council have in effect set up a completely new type of Hackney Carriage license. I can't see any definition in Law or legislation that allows them to do so. There is only one definition in law of which type of licence is allowed to ply for hire at a public Taxi stand or public highway.

Councils can deem what is to be a Hackney carriage, they can even apply zoning and bye-laws but the definition of a Hackney Carriage license remains the same throughout this country.

First of all we have to examine Kirklees councils current criteria in determining what is to be a Hackney Carriage. One assumes Kirklees Council licences Hackney carriage vehicles to a maximum seat capacity and every licensed proprietor is governed by the same regulations.

Kirklees seem to be creating two new licenses and calling them Hackney Carriage proprietors licences. But do Kirklees have the right in law to restrict these new H/C licenses from Plying for hire on a Taxi Rank and picking up passengers off the street?

If these new licenses are a variation of existing H/C licences then which law gives them the right to implement this new type of Hackney Carriage license. If they are not Hackney carriage licenses as defined in current legislation then they will not be allowed to stand at Taxi Ranks or pick up passengers from the public highway. They will also be disqualified from using the words Taxibus on any part of its livery. They can also be prosecuted for attempting to pass themselves off as Hackney Carriages.

So just what type of license is this?

Perhaps the reference in this article to the council bending over backwards to accommodate Ryburn Taxibus company is a clear indication of how far the council has gone in bending the rules? If indeed any rules have actually been bent.

A council has a statutory obligation to consider every application for a license but in creating these two new unique licenses this restricted authority may have cast a shadow over the current criteria for issuing new licences. Perhaps it should be a statutory requirement that every council that has a waiting list for any type of licence has to publicly publish their criteria for granting such licenses.

These new licenses are meant to conform to the definition of a Taxibus, which we all know first manifested itself in the 1985 act. The basics of that section gives a Taxi proprietor the right to run his Taxi as a bus service for part of the day or night and use it as a normal Taxi at times when it isn’t contracted to run a bus service. Since then, there have been suggestions of integrated travel, meaning purchasing one ticket which covers every aspect of a Journey including Taxis, some councils have even experimented with community transport using mostly private hire companies to service what in effect amounts to a ring and ride system.
However both these services are implemented by using existing Hackney and Private hire licensed vehicles.

It would appear that Kirklees council had reservations about issuing these new H/C licences because in the end they have had to get the applicants to sign an agreement disqualifying them from picking up and plying for hire at Taxi ranks. I think Kirklees realised they are powerless to place individual restrictions on Hackney carriage licenses without unilateraly applying those restrictions across the board.

The Council have gone someway in circumnavigating that dilemma by getting a written agreement with the parties concerned. The written agreement will be a powerful tool in a court of law should these licence conditions be breached but will they stand up to a legal challeng should these applicants ever take it upon themsleves to go down that road?

So what about this knew service and what legislation are these vehicles running under and what has the Passenger Transport Authority got to do with Hackney carriages? It seems to me that these vehicles are either a bus or they are Hackney carriages, they can’t be both. A bus can’t ply for hire on any street in this country and a Taxi being used as a bus service under the 1985 act remains a Hackney Carriage regardless of that act. So perhaps kirklees council should license these vehicles as Hackney carriages without restrictions or the Transport Authority should licences them as buses.

It would appear that Kirklees council is relying on section 47 of the 1976 act to get these restrictions implemented with the added security of a signed agreement but section 47 in the past has failed the legal challenge.

Section 47 states the following:

47-1
A district council may attach to the grant of a licence of a Hackney Carriage under the act of 1847 such conditions, as the district council may consider reasonably necessary.

47-2
without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing subsection, a district council may require any Hackney Carriage licensed by them under the act of 1847 to be of such design or appearance and bear such distinquishing marks as shall clearly identify it as a hackney carriage.

At first glance section 47-1 may appear to give Kirklees Council the authority to attach any condition it sees fit to these two new licenses but this section in effect means all licenses, not individual licenses.

It brings to mind the case of R v Manchester city council EX parte Reid when Mr Reid tried to get out of supplying a WAV for his free plate. It was touched upon that a council can apply certain conditions to new licenses but those conditions have to be applied to all new licenses right across the board. The recent Stockport case also blows a gaping hole in a councils ability to apply section 47 as it sees fit.

I have yet to come across a legal case which states a council can apply restrictive conditions such as these to an individual licence.

The Town Police Clauses Act 1847 gave local authorities powers to license taxis by way of byelaws. The Department for Transport has produced model byelaws which licensing authorities can use.

Under the terms of the Transport Act 1985, licensing authorities in England and Wales must operate a licensing system for taxis.

The licensing authority may specify that only certain types of vehicle can be used. Some other examples are listed below.

A vehicle’s colour and the signs it can display?
Vehicles Age Limit?
Frequency of testing?
Whether a meter is fitted?
Wheelchair accessibility? and much more.

So kirklees Council may have a dilemma because reading between the lines of this article it suggests to me that Ryburn have plans for further expansion. It will be interesting to see what happens when they go back to Kirklees Council for more Hackney Carriage licenses.

Best wishes

JD

Quite a lot of them think they can apply zoning, but my good friends LORD JUSTICE KENNEDY, LORD JUSTICE BUXTON and LORD JUSTICE KEENE have different views.

In MAUD v CASTLE POINT BOROUGH COUNCIL 02/10/2002 they decided amongst other things that;

15. The judge below had taken the view that section 37 of the 1847 Act, by its language, only permitted the licence to be granted for a taxi to ply for hire across the whole of an authority's area. That was based on the words in that section, as amended by the 1875 Act, "a licence to ply for hire within any urban district". It is submitted by Mr Wolfe that those words do not have the meaning adopted by the judge but merely denote the area of the licensing authority's jurisdiction. In other words, they define the geographical extent of that jurisdiction. They do not, contends Mr Wolfe, require the licence to be granted for the whole of the district in question. Therefore, one should simply apply the conventional administrative law principles. Here, the purpose of the condition would have been within the legislative object of the powers under Section 47 of the 1976 Act, and emphasis is placed on the broad wording, as it is described, of that empowering section which deals with conditions.

16. For my part, I prefer the judge's construction of Section 37, particularly bearing in mind the history of the phrase now under consideration. In its original form the words read that the commissioners might "from time to time license to ply for hire within the prescribed distance"; I emphasise the last four words. An alternative to the prescribed distance was then given. It seems to me that those words "within the prescribed distance" did not relate - or certainly did not relate solely - to the jurisdictional area of the commissioners. They denoted where the hackney carriages, as they truly were at that time, could ply for hire. Those words were later replaced by the words "within any urban district", as Mr Wolfe emphasises. But I cannot accept that that alteration was intended to render the phrase solely a jurisdictional one rather than one dealing with the area where the vehicle could ply for hire.

17. There is to my mind an even stronger point against Mr Wolfe's contention. If he were right, it would enable an authority to create by its licensing system two classes of taxis: one unrestricted as to where a taxi could ply for hire and the other restricted. The latter would patently be a second class type of taxi which could not operate from all the stands or perhaps all the streets in the borough or district. That seems to me to be contrary to the whole legislative approach adopted more recently by Parliament in this area of activity, the approach being to allow, as far as possible, open competition in the trade. As Lord Justice Woolf said in R v Great Yarmouth Borough Council ex p Sawyer [1989] RTR 297 at 298, the policy of the Transport Act 1985 is -

" ..... to remove restraints and allow market forces to take their course in a way which did not exist before Section 16 of the Transport Act 1985 came into effect."

In the same case Lord Justice Bingham (at page 303) referred to the Act of 1985 substituting "a free market policy" so long as the authority was not satisfied that there was no unmet demand. To bring into being a two-tier structure of licensed taxis within a district would fly in the face of that legislative approach.

18. In my view a condition preventing a taxi from plying for hire from a particular taxi stand or stands, or in a particular street or streets, would fall outside the scope of the powers granted by Parliament.

_________________
IDFIMH

John,
we are on the ball arnt we?
first of all the licenses were requested by the transport authority for the winning tenderer not Ryburn Taxibus Ltd.

whilst aggreeing to what you say, can I draw yor action to section 12 of the transport act 1985 and the notes thereof

"if the applicant for a new taxi license proposed to use it to provide a new service for instance under section 12 and had reasonable grounds to believe that there would be a demand for his service if he provided it a council which wished to refuse a license would have to satisfy themselves that demand would not be forthcomming"

the issue is that the government is paying for the vehicles and therefore the council are in no position to say demand is not forthcomming.

secondaly as the buses are paid for from public subscription to carry single fare passengers, its not fair to buck the market by putting them on ranks

I guess the position is they have to issue licenses like it or not.

the issue becomes redundant as to challenge the council I have to take them to court an action I am not going to do as my contract says they can be only used for single fares anyway.

this is the way they have chosen to deal with the matter I am happy the taxi drivers are happy.

I can see your point but you are realy being over simple if you see what I mean.

Geoff

by the way John.

the government has announced that they want more demand led services

if Ryburn Taxibus expand in this area we will apply for more licenses under section 12.

and we will expect the officers to be reasonable and follow the act.

I should have been more specific about zoning. A licensing Authority has to apply to the secretary of state to create one or more zones, or indeed remove any zones that are already in existance. A council on its own does not have the power to set up a seperate licensing Zone.

Is it not the case that the Government are going to implement an RRO with respect to the five percent of Councils that currently have zoning. This RRO would give councils the power to remove existing zones without first having to ask the Secretary of State.

Best wishes

JD

John when was that decided?
John Prescots office promised they were!

incidentally the last Zone created by the government was Ripponden and Hepton in 1980

the zone that will plate the taxibuses in Calderdale.

Zone were promised to end via a RRO, but so were quotas, and an end to the cross border mess.

But if the courts say zones are illegal, then surely zones are illegal.

A government financed report has said they think more DLS sould be out there, http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 30324.hcsp

But I think it will take a few years for the government to act on it, if of course they do in the first place.

the courts were refering to a council who were not zoning, but merely giving licences for cabs resricted to using certain ranks.

it was that which was illeagal.

interestingly enough the judge was saying if you give taxi licenses they can use the ranks.