driver wrote:
In part i agree with what all of you are saying, but at the end of the day Carl is a businessman and as such saw what he thought was a good business move, unfortunately for the rest of us it turned out to be the wrong move. I have no axe to grind as far as Carl is concerned, in fifteen years of taxi-ing in Cardiff i have only met him twice, so from an independent taxi drivers point of view de-limiting is both a financial and working environmental disaster. The population of Cardiff is approx 313,000 and has 480 taxi's plus over 1,000 private hire cars, (some of who work the streets on a friday and saturday nights,(these statistics were supplied by Cardiff Hackney Office)) also on a friday and saturday night Cardiff Bus run a cheap bus service from Westgate St to all parts of Cardiff from 11:00am - 3:00pm (this cancels out any unmet demand on those nights, the Council was using as a reason to delimit) the customer base in Cardiff is not large enought to sustain an unlimited amount of Hackney Carriages and still enable the independant driver to survive, also what about the rest of the week when there's not enought work for the 480 taxi's + the private hire's. this means that most of the independent drivers would have to join a company to survive.
Question who owns one of the largest taxi companies, and many of the smaller ones?
As for Counciler Islam presenting a petition from the Cardiff Taxi Drivers Association, i have been driving a taxi in Cardiff (working the streets) and been a member of the HC Association for as long as it has been going. i have never been aproached by or heard of CTD Association. Who are they and when was this petition handed around the trade?
The County Council of the City & County of Cardiff met at County Hall, Cardiff on Thursday 20 January,
3. Councillor Islam - Request from Members of the Cardiff Taxi Drivers Association urging the County Council to issue unlimited Hackney Carriage plates, in order to avoid the city's taxi drivers being charged excessive amounts of rent by the individual fleet owners.
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I hope that helps you.
For those who are wondering why Cardiff council had a change of heart and decided to lift numbers control the reason is clearly documented in the full story. The change in policy was initiated to circumvent any court action brought by Mr Cummings. Seeing as Mr Cummings wanted more licenses the council thought they would oblige him by lifting numbers control, that way Mr Cummings could have as many licenses as he liked. Unfortunately Mr Cummings wasn’t happy with that. Mr Cummings wanted the complete issue of licenses to himself and he certainly didn’t want any of the other 500 applicants to get a look in.
Cardiff council can issue licenses in any way they think fit, they are not tied to a set criteria in fact they can legally change the criteria for every issue of new licenses.
In this case the council had decided to issue one licence per person. Now some of us would no doubt think that was fair and reasonable but not good old Mr Cummings.
Lets not forget that a council can decide its own policy as and when it chooses, under the circumstances the council reviewed its policy in the light of the court action and decided to delimit. It's as simple as that. I am sure that one of the major reasons why the council did change its policy was because it could see that a quantity control policy would always leave the council vulnerable to legal challenges from all sides of the trade. They relieved themselves of that burden and from the continuing spiral of litigation, by removing numbers.
The answers to most of the questions surrounding this fiasco can be read in the minutes of the relevant committee meetings contained in the full document.
Copyright Acknowledgement should be given to TDO if any journal or magazine uses this story as an editorial or feature.
Regards
JD
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