Taxi Driver Online

Eh?

Only applications for NEW licences are charged at the mega-rate. Vehicle RENEWALS cost £267 for a year and this seems to include tests. Not the cheapest, but by no means particularly expensive.

Badge renewals are £156 for three years, so not really that expensive at all.

I mean, how many NEW taxi licence applications has there been in the last few years? Not more than a handful each year on average, so even though the fee is through the roof looked at in isolation as regards balancing the department's budget it's a drop in the ocean. Obviously they'll get a bit more from NEW PH applications though, because they're charged at the same rate and there's probably a fair turnover of vehicles entering and leaving the trade.

http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/f ... cence_fees

Incidentally the line towards the bottom of the spreadsheet marked "V600 Income - Other Local Authorities" is probably fees charged to other councils who don't have facilities to test their own vehicles, as I said earlier. Edinburgh will charge the other council for the testing, and the other council will in turn charge its taxi owners for the service.

So Edinburgh just adds it to its income from its own licensing fees to cover the costs of the tests performed.

Indeed, but if you look at equipment costs they've gone through the roof, so it's possible that the same costs previously allocated to operational materials have in later years been allocated to equipment costs, but when it comes to the bottom line it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

Look at gas and electricity, for example. It's fairly steady for the first two year, then reduces to nil then for the next two years it's nearly double what it was originally

What may have happened is that someone forgot to allocate the cost in middle two years, so they're increased the figures in the last two years to compensate. If you look at the last two figures they're identical, suggesting that they don't actually represent the true costs for the year but a figure someone came up with as a readjustment spread over two years.

The problem with these things is that you'll have people sitting in the accounts department somewhere who don't really know what's going on.

Thus you might get different staff in different years who allocate the same expenditure to different accounts, so the numbers look iffy but in reality it's not of huge significance.

Likewise, as regards the electricity bill that's likely to cover several different departments and has to be allocated out. So if someone cocks up or a new member of staff doesn't know properly what's going on then this may all be forgotten about, so you get a zero figure for a couple of years. But later someone notices this, so you might see an adjustment in later years as above.

And the problem with auditing and the like is that they can't go through absolutely everything, so they just pick things at random, and the smaller numbers in particular may never be checked at all.

Not that I'm saying everything is hunky dory, and most of the above is just speculation, but on the other hand it would be wrong just to jump to conclusions just because some of the figures seem inconsistent - there's probably a rational explanation for most of it.

Not sure precisely what that means, but overall it looks like they've been running a big deficit in the earlier years and they've increased licensing fees quite substantially to cover that, they've reduced the deficit and the final year shows a substantial surplus.

But there's still a substantial deficit over the six years as follows:

05/06 271,081 deficit
06/07 110,546 deficit
07/08 64,326 surplus
08/09 185,379 deficit
09/10 74,775 deficit
10/11 217,733 surplus

Which results in an overall deficit of £359,722

But I'm sure I recall an article on here from years ago - probably before this period - saying that there was a surplus, thus perhaps that's why they've generally being running at a loss over the last few years and only now are in surplus?

That's probably what's meant but 'unavailability of reserves' in one of the years, but precisely what's going on isn't clear without seeing the bigger picture.

count on us are doing the interim stance surveys.
what im not getting is the huge jump in price £7k to £34k its automated video recording ffs.
i asked for the tender documents and have not been given them so presumable they don't exist
jacobs and halcrow did the main surveys
interesting that the survey done by halcrow in 2009/10 despite asking for the received tenders cec failed to give me them with no explanation likewise count on us.im not saying the info isnt available its just that cec have decided that they will interpret foi requests any way they feel.
further when i asked for all documentation i meant all of it,so i could trawl through it and work out what was going on without jumping to conclusions as you put it.
however what you get is a polished and compacted version of events which even then looks suspect to any right thinking individual
your right these figures are meaningless without all the data,a lot of the items could easily be put into more than one category,thats why i wanted the details,these figures have been tinkered with imo.
the only categories that appear to be transparent are wages and ni contributions,even their not stupid enough to fool with the revenue.
same old same old from cec


another interesting note is that i was dealing with a freedom of information officer and now im dealing with the director of corporate governance mr mclean

i would think its for the crb checks as well and one policeman seems steep to me but then im more prudent than most.

the charges are for vehicle testing cec tec centre does testing for east/west and mid lothian i believe, or at least 2 of those three
and amounts to some 1000 vehicles,compared to edinburgh's some 2000 vehicles.

so for a 2000 vehicles testing that will be an average of roughly £1,000,000.
but for 1000 vehicles that will be a cool £100,000. average
c'mon is it just me who thinks somits wrong
i wonder how this compares to other licensing matters eg hmo's etc
theres a huge discrepancy here and blind acceptance turns my stomach

Well looking at the figures from an outsider's perspective and ignoring the interim surveys the figures suggest Jacobs did the first main survey, Halcrow the second, and Counts 'r' Us the latest survey?

Have their been three main surveys during the period?

Not sure how councils will approach a freedom of information requests like this, but if you're asking them to justify every last penny and provide invoices for every transaction then they may well come back and say that the cost of providing the information exceeds the limit, which I think they're allowed to do under the FOI legislation.

If you ask them to substantiate the survey fees alone you should be OK though, because there shouldn't be that many transactions going through the accounts.

The 1,000 Lothian vehicles are likely to include only vehicle testing.

The other aspects of Lothian vehicle licensing will likely be done by the councils themselves, so won't figure in these numbers.

Likewise the Lothian badges.

On the other hand, the £1 million or so cost for Edinburgh's 2,000 vehicles will include vehicle testing AND all the rest like administering the 2,000 vehicle licences AND the 4/5,000 drivers badges, or however many there are.

But I'm surprised the PH trade doesn't kick up a stink because in effect their licensing fees are going towards paying for the taxi surveys and legal fees to maintaing the restricted taxi numbers

Think they did that in places like Brighton, but I think they got away with it.

On the other hand I think some places charge a special levy to taxi plate holders only for the surveys etc, which seems fairer.

count on us don't do surveys as such, as there only a data collection company.
and no they don't have the latest survey as the tender for it isn't even out yet.
some time this year i believe

Surveys are only a method of removing responsibility from the Decision Making process!

In other words: "It's not my fault. That's what the Survey showed/recommended!"

_________________
Don't dream it ~ Be it.

Try capping without a survey and the council will lose in court.

_________________

http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

but should a council be allowed to charge this item through licensing fee's


after all the decision to restrict taxi numbers numerically is a self imposed burden,they don't have to do it.

so why pass that burden on to license holders and ultimately applicants.

im pretty sure thats contrary to natural justice.

and although they are allowed to make enough money to cover the costs of running the department,as they do not have to restrict then surely that isn't a necessary charge

getting applicants to pay for a council to engage a survey to deny the applicant a license.that cant be right

That's the one to take to the council Ombudsman. You need to ask about the misapplication of funds, fraudulent or otherwise?

If you do happen to catch them out, they will of course plead ignorance to cover for any wrong doing.

I can't really see any particular issue here. The legislation simply says that they should recover in license fees the costs they incur in carrying out their functions under the various sections, and that includes the option to restrict numbers.

As regards restrictions being a 'self-imposed burden' then aren't all licensing functions the same? They don't have to licence taxis at all, and even when they do much of how they licence them could be seen as a self-imposed burden. And after all it is vehicle licencees who are benefitting from the policy.

Of course, an applicant for a new taxi licence is in a different position, but I suspect the council would argue that since the applicant will be aware of the restricted numbers policy then to that extent making an application and paying the fee is a...er...self-imposed burden.

Rather than the fee for an application per se I think there's probably more mileage in the challenging the size of the fee, since presumably natural justice dictates that the fee charged should bear some relation to costs incurred in processing the licence, and there's no obvious reason why it should cost more to process a new licence as compared to renewing an existing one, at least to the extent suggested by the disparity in fees between new applications and renewals. And of course no other council has a similar disparity of anything like that in Edinburgh. It looks more like simply a deterrent to stop new applicants.

And why are PH licences charged at the same rate as taxis? It should surely cost less to adminster a PH licence fee, particularly since many of the costs incurred - surveys and legal fees, most obviously, not to mention staff and management time spent on the whole restricted numbers gig - relate to taxi licences only.

Has CEC ever justified the £1,500 plus fee for new vehicle applications, and has anyone - particularly on the PH side - ever challenged it?

12. Fees for taxi and private hire car licences.
A licensing authority shall charge such fees in respect of taxi and private hire car licences and
applications for such licences as may be resolved by them from time to time and shall seek to ensure
that the total amount of such fees is sufficient to meet the expenses incurred by them in carrying
out their functions under sections 10 to 23 (other than section 19) of this Act in relation to such
licences.

Where does the above say anything about legal fees and court cases? I'm not saying your wrong, but I think it's a stretch to include legal fees as a consequence of losing court cases appealing against council decisions.

Think about it, taxi drivers applying for licenses are potentially funding court cases against themselves through their licence fees – natural justice, I don't think.

The size of the licence fee is another issue and more grist to the mill, how do they justify such a charge?

What, we might expect a few court cases so the fee for a licence is £1500?

I think Ali has a point Dusty.