Taxi Driver Online

Well I assume "expenses incurred by them in carrying out their functions" includes any litigation arising in the course of them carrying out their functions"?

I mean, take your argument to its logical conclusion and the council cocks up in any way and/or does anything that an individual licence holder considers detrimental to their interests and to that extent withold all or part of their fees?

Sounds a bit like those who argue that they should be able to withhold part of their taxes because they don't agree with nuclear weapons, for example.

Of course it's all unfair, but unfortunately that's life.

As for the £1,500 for new applicants, didn't I question that, and indeed have done so several times in the past, thus I'm not sure what your point is?

But all of this smacks of nitpicking, and even if there is some mileage here wouldn't you be better concentrating on the bigger issues, such as all these court cases that were supposedly round the corner?

Oh, I get it now, Ali's a bit miffed at having to pay yet another £1,500 for his latest application.

WTF's he done with the proceeds from all these plates?

Well I assume "expenses incurred by them in carrying out their functions" includes any litigation arising in the course of them carrying out their functions"?

I mean, take your argument to its logical conclusion and the council cocks up in any way and/or does anything that an individual licence holder considers detrimental to their interests and to that extent withold all or part of their fees?

Sounds a bit like those who argue that they should be able to withhold part of their taxes because they don't agree with nuclear weapons, for example.

Of course it's all unfair, but unfortunately that's life.

As for the £1,500 for new applicants, didn't I question that, and indeed have done so several times in the past, thus I'm not sure what your point is?

But all of this smacks of nitpicking, and even if there is some mileage here wouldn't you be better concentrating on the bigger issues, such as all these court cases that were supposedly round the corner?

Oh, I get it now, Ali's a bit miffed at having to pay yet another £1,500 for his latest application.

WTF's he done with the proceeds from all these plates?

any how i doubt necessary functions was intended by Parliament to be a blunderbuss to mean any thing at all.

thats the sort of carte Blanche approach that councils take to the interpretation of the acts,and thats why its a mess.

And that's exactly what you find yourself battling against. Their interpretation of the act in its broadest terms, until redefined through the courts.

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.

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.

im not being funny but they haven't even supplied the tender for the interim surveys.

how did count on us get the contract,why the jump in fee's to almost 5 times the price of the previous years.
why is it even necessary it wasn't in previous years why now ?

all questions that should be easily answered if the council adhered to the terms of a foi request and where transparent with the information

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

You make it sound like you're being hard done by the system, whereas it's the system that's lined your pockets to the extent of well over £100k over the past handful of years.

Now a wider political point made by Sussex - about the whole system with regard to the costs CEC has incurred fighting legal battles - has been usurped by yourself in your own personal crusade against the fee for yet another application for a plate. A familiar pattern?

So Ali I think I'll leave you and Skull to wallow in your self-righteousness and self-pity.

But you can't exploit the system for personal gain and then complain about how inequitable the system is without looking hypocritical.

It's like Fred Goodwin complaining about how inequitable boardroom salaries are

Of course Ali's well within his rights to question CEC and/or the ombudsman on the issue, but I suspect that now his true purpose has become clearer then no one other than him, yourself and jasbar (presumably) are particularly interested.

Or at least I hope not.