Taxi Driver Online

Back to the original point, I've got a hearing date much sooner than expected, 25th July.

In the same post I got a letter from the LO with a voting form on the following proposal:

to increase the permissible age for initially licencing a vehicle from 3 years to 5 years and to remove the maximum vehicle age (currently set at 7 years), such that a vehicle could continue to be licenceable subject to vehicle conditions (sic) and at the discretion of the licencing officer.

This has to be returned to the LO by 16th July, with the next meeting of the taxi forum on 17th July.

This form has been sent to "the trade". I still await a definition of "the trade". But then "the rules" expect a majority vote, and over 40% of "the trade" has to vote, or similar words!! I forget the exact wording of "the rules" at the moment. It's a pity we don't have the same criteria for electing a government or councillors.

so vote yes

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

I think I might well do that as I put the proposal to the taxi forum meeting!!

can you push the vote issue amongst your fellow owners?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

From what I've heard from the LO there's been a good number of forms returned already; I didn't ask and he didn't say which way the vote was going.

But the system's unfair. According to the LO, every operator licence has one vote per licence; I have 2 licences but have only had one voting paper! Foul play or oversight?

speaking to a PH owner today whose 07 plate tourneo becomes 6 years old next month and liable for "exemption" (i.e. 4 month plates and £160/year MORE to pay) he said it had done 240,000 miles.....odd

then i checked, the normal standard PH regs have no mileage limitation, the "age exempt" does - 200k

SO......you could have a plated 5 year old 400K car, but not a 7 year old 200K car

der......................

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

Of total relevance, I done an FoI to see whether the DC had adopted the section of the Act as required. they don't have any record of it (see Vale of Aylesbury case in the Transcript section). If they can't prove the relevant section has been adopted, their rules ain't worth the paper they're written on!

I have been telling them this on here for months, but it's like banging your head against the wall, so I have stopped bothering

Final hearing date for this is Thursday 25th July at Canterbury Magistrates if anyone wants to come along.

In the final paragraphs of my witness statement I put the Aylesbury Vale DC v Call a Cab case which seems to have got some heads buzzing at the Civic Centre!

Well any lawyer worth his salt, will ask them to prove they have adopted the act? They will have to produce the minutes of be meeting when it was adopted? If they can't, you win:-) simples

I would bet good money on our council having lost the minutes in the fire 5 years ago.

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Grandad,

i thought they all used online storage for reports?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

They lost all the data that was used to calculate our license fees in the fire.

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Grandad,

The only data they need is the cost of carrying out the service?

Towards the end of his argument Mr Neish drew our attention to the fact that it was nowhere below proved, on behalf of the local authority, that a resolution has, in fact, been passed under s 45 of the Act, applying that Act to the district of the city of Hull. Therefore, the fact at the basis of all this law that this is a controlled district was never proved. Mr Sampson, who has dealt with this matter very fairly on behalf of the prosecutor, accepted that it was incumbent upon the local authority to prove (no doubt as a formal matter, but it was not done) that the Act had been applied to the Hull district and therefore the necessary precondition of all these offences, that Mr Wilson was acting in a controlled district, had not been made out.

I see no answer to this objection. It may be regarded as a technical, and even unattractive, point but it is properly taken. That means that there would be no point in remitting this case to the Magistrates because even if it were remitted there would be a fatal gap in the evidence that was before them on the first occasion, which could not now be filled: as I put to Mr Sampson in argument, and he properly accepted, if Mr Wilson had been represented below, and that representative had properly waited until the end of the prosecution case and then submitted there was no case to answer because of this defect in the prosecution evidence, it would have been extremely difficult for the prosecutor to argue that he should be allowed to reopen his case.