Council to meet taxi drivers over Leeds Bradford Airport rowLEEDS council bosses have agreed to meet with the city’s taxi drivers to discuss a long-running dispute concerning the new rank at Leeds-Bradford airport.
The YEP reported on Monday that scores of hackney drivers had voted to take possible strike action unless they could meet council leader Keith Wakefield to discuss the issue.
They gave the council until 2pm yesterday to come back with a commitment to meet them.
And last night, the council confirmed to the YEP that it would “meet up as soon as possible” with the drivers’ representative in a bid to avert strike action.
Councillor Richard Lewis, executive board member with responsibility for city development, told the YEP: “This ongoing issue has arisen as a result of the taxi associations in Leeds not being awarded a contract by Leeds Bradford International Airport.
“This followed a competitive tendering exercise carried out by the airport in 2008, after its sale to the private sector.
“We do sympathise with those drivers who feel that this has had a negative effect on their trade at a time when it is suffering considerably from the impact of the recession.
“We have told [Leeds hackney carriage union branch secretary] Mr Landau that we are more than happy to meet with him at a mutually agreeable time, to try and find a workable solution that would be acceptable to all parties involved. We will set a meeting up as soon as possible, which we hope will prevent any protest action being taken by the hackney carriage drivers in the meantime.”
The drivers, all members of the hackney carriage branch of union Unite, had been vowing to plough on with their threatened strike action after claiming they had not had a satisfactory “conciliatory” response from council leader Coun Keith Wakefield in time.
After the deadline passed yesterday, drivers were meeting again to decide the next stage of their campaign.
Debate has been raging for several years about the provision of a black-and-white taxi rank opposite the airport terminal on Whitehouse Lane. The airport was sold off by Leeds and its partner councils in 2007 and its new bosses re-tendered the provision of taxi services to a private-hire company in 2008.
The hackney operators have always insisted this was unfair and senior councillors have also thrown their weight behind the rank, however drivers accused decision-makers of dragging their feet on pressing ahead with the plan.
source:
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/
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