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Are you a Cash Cow?
During the past month or so there has been a marked increase in reports of trade discontent in respect of increasing and differing license fees across the country.
How can it be that in a place like Selby it will cost a taxi proprietor £99 to license a taxi, whereas in Sutton in Ashfield the cost rises to a staggering £319 to license the same vehicle?
Obviously, my mate Nigel in Ashfield has pots of money, he can afford the fee, I am a poor northerner, and can’t.
We appear to have almost 400 licensing authorities with almost 400 odd different fees and charges, ironically, almost 400 odd different ways of arriving at the fee itself.
Don't get me wrong here, a number of local authorities are actually subsidising the taxi licensing regime. The cost of what you may consider enforcement is a rather expensive hobby to undertake.
Perhaps a decent start to this is maybe looking at local authority websites, whilst a few are decent and easy to use, all too many are difficult, with a pitiful supply of information, trying to find something about licensing fees is like looking for the proverbial needle. Believe me, after looking through most of the country’s local authority websites during the past month I do know. Where do these people go for websites? AAA website Ltd – the first in the book? One of the better ones is in St. Edmundsbury, I have absolutely no idea where the place is, but the way they set out fees is easy for someone even as thick as me, other local authorities should take note.
Before I continue, let’s look at the charging power allowed in the 1976 act in respect of driver fee’s, please take note of the bold type;
Section 53 of the 1976 Act at (2) states;
Drivers’ licences for hackney carriages and private hire vehicles
(2) Notwithstanding the provisions of the Act of 1847, a district council may demand and recover for the grant to any person of a licence to drive a hackney carriage, or a private hire vehicle, as the case may be, such a fee as they consider reasonable with a view to recovering the costs of issue and administration and may remit the whole or part of the fee in respect of a private hire vehicle in any case in which they think it appropriate to do so.
The costs attributed to section 53 are ‘quite’.....no hang on, ‘very’ specific, it pertains to Driver Licensing. A council can recover the costs of issue and administration. Most of us now have time dated ‘badges’, or more specifically an ID badge, these often come complete with a photograph, therefore we are issued with a new ‘badge’ every time the license is up for renewal. In days gone by we had a metal badge, which lasted for years. So I can see the need for paying for the cost of making a new one every renewal.
The administration. Okay, errm administering, it’s a thing licensing officers apparently do.......administer. Presumably this means what it says in the dictionary, which is pretty useless, because amongst its many meanings, it states it means the ‘act of administering’. So a quick recheck with a decent dictionary tells me it means to ‘manage’ or ‘supervise’.
How many hours a year does a licensing officer dedicate to supervising a single licensee? Well I ain’t got a clue, but allegedly it’s all worked out and your driver licensee fee should comprise of the costs of issue, which is likely to be, 10p for the paper license, £3 for the plastic badge, £1.50p in postage and associated costs, with £96.40p administering.
In days gone by the £96.40p administration could be easily explained away, for example, the local authority might have had to make a phone call or two just to make sure the person they’re licensing isn’t an axe wielding homicidal maniac. But is that still true now?
I don't think it is. Virtually all of you reading this will at some point have to produce, at a separate cost, a valid CRB certificate, you may have to at a separate cost go to a solicitor for a statutory declaration, you will have to declare all offences, if you don't and the CRB states offences you haven’t added to the application, you will be refused a license at best, taken to court for perjury at worst.
Indeed, at separate cost you may be required to provide a medical. At separate cost you may be required to pay for a DVLA check, where effectively your name is added to a database and if you are caught committing a driving offence this information will be sent to your local authority.
If you see what I’m getting at here, a lot of items are at a separate cost, they are not within the physical cost of the license fee. They all merely make up a sum part of the information the local authority needs to assess your fitness and propriety.
In my view, it is costing an awful lot of money for a licensing department to check the medical, CRB, and all other items on the application form are actually in order. Which facing facts, shouldn’t take much more than a quick glance. Yes, I accept the majority do actually pay for the minority, and by this I mean if a driver commits a misdemeanour, the cost of preparing reports and licensing hearings is maybe a cost that should be borne by all license holders. Is that cost over one year really 96.4% of the license fee?
Indeed, in certain areas it is predominantly private hire drivers that are found to be committing misdemeanours, should a hackney carriage driver have to pay the cost of administering the costs associated with reports for illegal PH activities?
The above being said, the section of the act pertaining to drivers licenses specifically omits the word ‘supervision’, which is ironically within section 70 (c) in connection with licensed vehicles, but more about this later.
I skipped over the subject of the CRB check, but referring to this some local authorities are silly enough to insist on annual CRB checks. To be honest, if they are actually doing their jobs properly, working with enforcement agencies, it would seem to me, this is a cost that isn’t actually needed. This is a rather confusing move anyway, primarily because the CRB service are so inept that it takes so long to get a check on time, your next license is due by the time it arrives. More importantly, taxi drivers are supposed to be part of the NOS, the Notifiable Occupations Scheme, where the authorities work together, basically LA’s are supposed to be notified that one of their licensees may have inadvertently been found guilty of ritual sex with a goat. Whilst the NOS should set a few alarm bells ringing about major offenders, many local authorities now have companies in place that report on lesser offences, such as speeding (hence the DVLA check).
Some local authorities charge the driver a fee over and above the cost of the CRB check, a sort of handling fee, which seems to be part of the all encompassing word ‘administration’. Great ain’t it, a fee for handling the CRB check which they insist on anyway! I’m not joking here, the cost of a CRB is £36, yet some local authorities charge upwards of £50. Whilst this isn’t seemingly questioned, surely the cost of handling the CRB should be or is (in the case of some LA’s) incorporated, as explained above, into the actual license fee itself?
Talking of CRB checks, some local authorities insist of drivers having the more expensive enhanced check, which incidentally I agree with, unfortunately the CRB service doesn’t. They apparently see the job of a taxi driver not being sufficiently risky enough to warrant the enhanced version, drivers maybe paying for enhanced and receiving the bog standard check. Whilst this maybe minor to you, in terms of cost the difference is £10.
Whilst I will mention other fee’s local authorities are charging some of you a little later in this article, you should consider that in respect of the driver license administration fee, even our friend Mr James TH Button concedes that enforcement against unlicensed drivers cannot legitimately be included within the fee.
Fees for vehicle and operators’ licences.
(1)Subject to the provisions of subsection
(2) of this section, a district council may charge such fees for the grant of vehicle and operators’ licences as may be resolved by them from time to time and as may be sufficient in the aggregate to cover in whole or in part—.
(a) the reasonable cost of the carrying out by or on behalf of the district council of inspections of hackney carriages and private hire vehicles for the purpose of determining whether any such licence should be granted or renewed;.
(b) the reasonable cost of providing hackney carriage stands; and.
(c) any reasonable administrative or other costs in connection with the foregoing and with the control and supervision of hackney carriages and private hire vehicles.
In respect of section 70 (a), which is the vehicle inspection, this should be a fairly straightforward to assess, if your council operate an in house testing arrangement it will be a case of one department internally charging another, naturally at minimal cost save for a small administration fee to organise a test date and of course the test itself. If the test is outsourced, again it should be a fairly simple arrangement.
Section 70 (b) covers the reasonable cost of providing Hackney Carriage Stands, its reasonable to suggest private hire shouldn’t be paying for a rank they legally cannot use, so you HC folks, pay for the yellow paint, the brush and the bored looking bloke whose jeans are invariably showing his buttocks.
Finally, we have section 70 (c), which allows a LA to recover the reasonable cost of administration in the supervision of hackney carriages and private hire vehicles. The supervision part obviously covers a degree of enforcement, which is not exactly an inexpensive activity when enforcement exercises are carried out.
Obviously, parts (a), (b) and (c) are all barrelled together and make up the license fee, although a number of local authorities kindly allow the test to be paid for separate, particularly if the test is outsourced.
But times have changed, there appears to be some hidden discounts and costs now associated with licensing, the question is, should they?
Some local authorities set different charges for different vehicle ages, some local authorities offer a discounted fee for vehicles using bio fuel and other eco friendly vehicles, some offer reduced fees to those licensing accessible vehicles. But the act is reasonably specific in what the local authority can charge for; in respect of vehicles this can be surmised as; inspections, ranks, administration and supervision.
Quite simply, a person licensing a vehicle should pay for the cost’s attributed to the licensing function, everyone should pay the same fee. Because the costs of the licensing function do not differ on the basis that Fred down the road drives a Toyota Prius!
A discounted fee, whilst admirable, would appear to be outside the remit of the charging power allowed in the act.
A local authority could offer incentives; but from a fund available from another department that will remunerate licensees, who all, in my opinion, should pay the same fee.
Those other hidden extras
The fees set out on LA websites are in some cases misleading, in others highly dubious to say the least.
Some licensing authorities inadvertently charge an administration fee for the inspection of Hackney Carriage registers, well, according to section 42 of the 1847 act they shouldn’t, the following legend is stated;
“Every licence shall be made out by the clerk of the commissioners, and duly entered in a book to be provided by him for that purpose; and in such book shall be contained columns or places for entries to be made of every offence committed by any proprietor or driver or person attending such carriage; and any person may at any reasonable time inspect such book, without fee or reward.”
Some local authorities will arbitrarily ‘fine’ a driver for the late production of certificates; another charges a higher fee to a non resident than a local. Again, in my view, such fining goes beyond the bounds of what is actually chargeable in the scheme of the act, how much is a stamp these days, do the Royal Mail now charge by the mile?
For example, the transfer of a cab license, from one individual to another should be nothing more than a paper exercise, this is reflected by some local authorities who charge a nominal fee as befits the activity in what is merely a change in the register, other’s however charge a totally disproportionate amount for the actual man hours the transfer would actually take.
One LA charges £10.50p to change an address, whilst at the same time charging £156.00p for a change of proprietor. Now that’s a serious increase in the price paper!
Unfortunately I can go on; one LA has the following legend borne on their fee’s list;
“Issue of Caution Notice/letter for administrative purposes following suspension, late application or late production of documents £25.00”
Again, I don't see this as a chargeable function the LA can make under the terms of the act. Indeed, I would say it was possibly contrary to the act. Basically, after an appearance in front of a licensing authority a person has (by virtue of the act of 1936) 21 days to appeal the decision to a magistrate (or Crown Court depending upon the license type), the 21 day period doesn’t actually begin until the notice is served. The LA has to serve the notice as a part of its statutory function.
My friend Bernard May MD, did last month allude to the taxi trade in London “bending over and taking it boys”, I’m afraid a good number of their carrot munching cousins outside London seem to do the same.
In these times of recession, many LA’s are looking at staffing levels and are looking at ways of cutting costs. As you all should know, the licensing function itself should be self funding. This means despite the recession, unless licensees stop licensing vehicles etc the department should be effectively recession proof.
This is why I take exception to the comments attributed to one local government official who stated in response to a taxi trade call for greater checks;
“That’s not going to happen at a time when the council is considering major cutbacks.”
If the council attributed to the above quote is considering cutbacks, then the ONLY beneficiaries should be the license holders, who should expect lower fees. Statements like that actually suggest the council concerned is creaming the profits of licensing and using it to fund other functions.
Having spent a good amount of man hours trawling the internet and emailing local authorities (all who did respond were actually quite decent), I seem to have come to the conclusion that a not insignificant number are seriously taking the urine with cab owners, statements like the above don't exactly help persuade me otherwise.
It’s like paying for a painter to decorate your house, then asking him to do the plumbing.
Obviously there is a need for all local authorities to sing from the same hymn sheet when it comes license fees. Surely the combined brains of the DFT and Audit commission could and should come up with some clear enforceable guidance in respect of what the taxi trade can expect and how the local authority can work out fees.
Don't get me wrong here; some local authorities along with their overstretched licensing departments are a credit to their licensees. But some seem to see us as income, are the ones who will take the headlines, to the detriment of all.
Indeed, after all of the above 2700 odd words I do have a few words of warning. I have heard of cases where alleged trade consultants will be brought into areas by trade representatives who know sweet FA about anything. These consultants charge the local trade to represent them at meetings in connection with fees, they are paid win, lose or draw. You should be aware the cost of a licensing department in a large metropolis will be more expensive than in a rural area, before you question fees make sure you know the facts.
I intend to place a league table of license fees on the NTA website in due course, input is invited from all, when your fees increase let me know and changed will be made.
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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin
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