Taxi Driver Online

Letter: Taxi fees and the law

Letter: Your headlines in Saturday’s Star state that the council will be increasing many prices such as car parking fees, crematorium fees, meals on wheels, and taxi licences.

What the council does about increases for the first three things mentioned can only be controlled by public outcry, or refusal to use the services.

Taxi licence fees, on the other hand, are controlled by law. Under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 1847 and 1976, the council can only charge the actual cost of issuing the licences.

It cannot charge what it likes in order to fill the gap in the budget. As it must already be obeying the law, I would suggest that it does not have much room to manoeuvre on the fees. I am sure that it realises that, so I fail to understand why the Shropshire Star has been misinformed on this point.

If the council departments just did what they are meant to do, instead of making simple things complicated, they could save their £7.1 million without any great effort. I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to find a police authority in England that makes it compulsory for its police officers on the beat to have qualified in basic first aid. So why is one of the new rules that our licensing department is trying to put in place for taxi drivers to undertake a first aid course. If they don’t then we will never become a five-star taxi driver.

I am still at a complete loss as to what it is all about. As to what it will cost taxi drivers to fulfil, and the council to control, does it matter? The council does not care about its budget so one cannot expect them to care about ours.

Alwyn Cox

Oswestry

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

Whoops looks like they've been rumbled.

well a few local cab firms challenged our council to justify their last increase they managed to produce a set of accounts which showed they lost £30000 on taxi licensing its is almost impossible to prove because because coucil accountancy practices hide the true figures by lumping them in with everything else

Our council basically say that the licensing department costs X to run. The taxi part costs Y the pubs etc costs W other bits cost A, B, C, etc sothe proportion of the cost for taxi licensing is X%. 2 years ago this % was 25% but last year it was 40%. At the last taxi meeting the LO told us that one member of staff had been moved to another department and was not being replaced. I told the meeting that we will be looking forward to a reduction in fees because of the lower wages bill but I was told that there would be another increase again this year.

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Grandad,

Anybody having a complaint about charges they believe to be false or inflated can make a complaint to the District Auditor. They come and look through all the councils books. A threat to the councils Chief Exec to bring in the District Auditor usually gets results.