Taxi Driver Online

Taxi licensing fees should not be used to raise revenue for the council general funds says GMB

GMB today revealed that using the Freedom of Information Act it has discovered that Brighton & Hove Council has been using taxi licensing fees to raise revenue for the council general funds.

Following a number of Freedom of Information Act enquires GMB taxi driver members in Brighton and Hove have discovered that nearly £90,000 of their licensing fees revenue has been spent elsewhere by the council over the last three years. The GMB are also concerned that fees for this year's budget, projecting a huge £58,000 surplus, will also be spent elsewhere.

The Department of Transport has confirmed that taxi licensing fees should be 'ring-fenced' and not diverted away from the taxi trade. The GMB therefore ask where has our member's money gone.

Mick Hildreth, GMB PDB Provincial Hackney Carriage & Private Hire Secretary said, "GMB's Professional Drivers Branch, with members the length and breath of the country, is calling on all councils when setting taxi licensing fees to keep to the law and not divert taxi fee revenues to other departments within the council.

GMB is demanding that every penny is repaid to drivers and owners, and in future any surplus fees should be kept within the taxi licensing budget. He is also urging the Department for Transport to write to all councils reminding them that taxi fee revenues must be ring-fenced and only spent within the taxi licensing regime, and not used as a cash cow for councils to do what they like with."

Ends

Contact: Mick Hildreth, GMB Professional Drivers Branch on 07814 032002 or GMB Press Office: Steve Pryle on 07921 289880 or rose Conroy on 07974 251823..

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IDFIMH

Clearly someone in the hierarchy of the council is unaware of the 1976 Mis Act.

I suggest everyone who has concerns about where their fees money goes, sends in their own FoI Act enquires.

May I suggest these questions to start with?

1. Can you please advise me if there was any deficit in the hackney carriage and private hire licensing budget, in the last three financial years (2007/8, 2008/9, 2009/10)?

2. Can you please advise me if there was any excess in the hackney carriage and private hire licensing budget, in the last three financial years (2007/8, 2008/9, 2009/10)?

3. If there was a deficit or excess can you please advise how much for each financial year (2007/8, 2008/9, 2009/10)?

4. If there was an excess in the financial years 2007/8, 2008/9, 2009/10 can you advise me what this money was used for?

5. Can you please give me an itemized break down on what the money received from taxi and private hire licensing fees was spent on, in the last three financial years (2007/8, 2008/9, 2009/10)?

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IDFIMH

Don't all Councils filter the money down to other departments??

Many do, but they do so in contravention of the act.

A reliable source tells me that when the GMB approached the senior mush at the DfT he said that £90,000 over three years was a small sum compared to what some councils have diverted, or alleged to have diverted.

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IDFIMH

Mmmm interesting.

It still doesn't make it right especially considering that there is such a shortage of ranks in many areas, couldn't the money be used for things like that

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Our Council have been doing this for years and when you ask for a breakdown you hear nothing, they knowing full well that you do not have the resources to challenge them in court...... That's our so called democracy for you. As always the law is only there for those that can afford it .... Period

It's not right, the mush from the DfT was implying that many councils haven't a f***ing clue.

The money must be spent within the taxi licensing regime. Any council that doesn't is acting illegally and when found out will have to repay that money.

It's only an apathetic trade that has allowed our money to be syphoned off. Time to readdress that.

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IDFIMH

Try it this way, and it wont be you taking the council to court, it will be the Information Commissioner.

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IDFIMH

Ta Sussex have also asked for copies of my file that I asked for after paying the ten pound fee I paid last time and didn't get??

Sefton redressed that situation many years ago.... but people should also reliance that the funding from licensing is from private hire and hackney, and that the Hackney Trade can only ask for the money that they paid in to be used for hackney issues............... or they could ask for more enforcement officers who would obviously be used for both private hire and hackney....

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Is it mentioned here or do you know actually that the licence in B. & H. has to be renewed each year, if not it expires?
Moreover is this common with other councils?
(In Germany it´s every five years now and in Zurich a licence even holds a lifetime, if you stick to the job.)

Well, they didn´t get money from me this year, is all I can say, I didn´t renew my licence this time, in Mai, for I don´t have any clue if or when I ever come back and didn´t want to go through the procedure each year, the latter is even more a pain than the fee itself.

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Jochen Lembke, Europe´s cab-driving writer and author of the best Hitch-hiker´s-Guide-to-the-Galaxy-volume-six ever written. Or else money back (haha.)

I believe (from the guys who were at the forefront of the reimbursement of licensing fees back into the licensing funds in Brum) that there is a small window of opportunity at the end of each financial year, during which it is possible to ask for a copy of the accounts for the licensing department.

I also believe that the rate-paying public have a right to a copy of those accounts & it might be best to find out when that window of opportunity is in your LA, so that the appropriate letter is sent in every year.

Once you have the accounts, you can analyse them in your own time & ask the questions that need asking.

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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.

As PH I personally wouldn't object to using money from all the fund to provide proper rank spaces for the HC's providing that once they had them they didn't abuse them by over ranking in some areas and not ranking at all in others. I think it is beneficial to the PH trade to have the HC's on ranks and not anywhere they god damn please

I also think that it would be a good idea wherever possible, but not close to larger ranks or in bus depots, there should be one rank space for HC's attached to bus stops

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

After going through some rather trying times with our local taxi enforcement office lately over the late application of a "Private Hire Driver" Licence renewal after a computer glitch in our own office. And after jumping through a vast number of hoops for them in respect of getting everything I required together regards New Taxi Medical, New CRB Application (Even though I already hold a current Enhanced CRB with, our County Council Travel & Transport service) , DVLA UK Driver licence check, DSA Hackney Carriage & Private Hire Taxi Driver Assessment Test completed and passed. Please bear in mind here that this applied for PH Driver licence is for me! a man who has been a fully licensed PH Driver continuously since 1995 plus a holder of a Operators Licence since 1999, and a man of good standing and repretation within his own community. It has taken I calendar month for them to produce my replacement / renewed licence. In the mean time because I was without a driver licence for that period of time it has caused my business to falter to such a point as to put my day to day business in a financial predicament which will in turn will take several months to come back from and could on balance cause the forced unemployment of part-time staff members.
They told me this resulting crisis could have been avoided if my licence renewal had been in on time, but what they do not state on the renewal forms they sent to my office 3 months prior to renewal was that it would take at least 4 working weeks to get everything back from the likes of DVLA & CRB, plus the weeks of waiting time to get an DSA Taxi Assessment test slot. In the mean time what they did not fail to do was to take and process my £183.80 licence fee payment within minutes on the day I put in the application 1 month before they handed me my New PH licence. So far I estimate the clerical error my office made in listing the renewal date incorrectly on our computer system has so far in total cost my business over £1000.00 - The most annoying thing about all this is that at no time during the 3 months from when they sent out the renewal documentation did they bother giving my office a courtesy call or email reminder prior to the licence becoming invalid. You would have thought that if these local Taxi departments were worth their salt they would use their data base to flag up scenario's such as this. After all what do we pay our licence fees for, they do not seem to do anything else apart from hampering our businesses with red tape.

On the subject of which Mick Hildreth of GMB is talking about! I find this a much warranted issue to address. Together with other like minded Private Hire Taxi Owners in our region of Broadland, we are in the process of planning to force (with the use of the Freedom of Information Act & the 1976 Mis provisions Act and the help of the FSB legal wing of which we are full members) our local governing body Broadland District Council, to come up with all the figures of monies taking in by them for both PH & HC licensing fees, including Operators fees for the last 10 years. We have worked out that the resulting figure could be in the region of approx £2.3 Million overall. And the purpose of this exercise would be to determine what amount of that money has been used to benefit our businesses over that same 10 year period.
To be honest with you all, I think you all know what the result will be with our findings. It will be contrary to the 1976 Mis Act, and we will find that our local governing body has been using those funds like a "Cash Cow" and would be totally guilty of filtering off £10.000's each and every year for other council lead schemes and practices which bear not relation to the businesses whose paid licence fees have swollen that particular coffer.