Taxi Driver Online

Drivers are lucky to take £12 an hour never mind earn it. He's off his head.

Yes your bang on the money. Also Mr Piper has form when it comes to relaxing the laws, he floods the ranks with vehicles then asks the council to stop issuing plates and revert back to WAV only. He then sells the vehicles at a prime rate.

Let me first of all say that Bolsover ​— and indeed every other council that licenses private hire vehicles and operators — is legally "a controlled district". Under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, within section 80 a controlled district means: "any area for which this Part of this Act is in force by virtue of a resolution passed by a district council under section 45 of this Act."
Section ​45, regardless of the legal requirement for advertising and resolving of the provisions, sets a relevant area. That relevant area is defined thus in section 45(2):

(a) "if the Act of 1847 is in force throughout the area of the council, that area; and
(b) if the Act of 1847 is in force for part only of the area of the council, that part of ​that area."

I automatically assume that at some stage Bolsover has formally adopted the 1976 Act, and if so, then section 80(2) comes into force:-

"In this Part of this Act references to a licence, in connection with a controlled district, are references to a licence issued by the council whose area consists of or includes that district, and "licensed" shall be construed accordingly."
Without delving deeper into quoting the legislation at this stage, "the area" is set by the 1847 Act, which in turn was defined by section 15 of the Transport Act 1985 which set the boundaries for the whole of the council's area.
Whilst I am fully aware of the speculative comments in Mr Button's book that perhaps a local authority can issue licences outside of its area, the huge amounts of cross-border cases over the years quite clearly have all set boundaries.
In short, I do not believe that it is lawful in any way, shape or form for Bolsover Council to set up a private hire business and license it and the drivers working for it, and the vehicles those drivers use, anywhere other than within their controlled district.

I move to Section 57 of the 1976 Act, and the wording of that Act which appears to have confused many as to where they can issue licences.
Let me first say that section 57 is NOT a section of the Act which applies to the setting of conditions, or anything other than the power to request information. And that information is only available for local authorities to decide whether to issue a licence or not, as the case may be.
The confusing wording is contained in section (2)(b)(ii): the words are "the address or addresses, whether within the council or not, for which he intends to carry on a business in connection with private hire vehicles licensed under this Part of this Act."

Over the years there have been many cross-border cases. In one of those cases, Murtagh —v- Bromsgrove, the issue of the wording of section 57 was raised on behalf of the Appellant in an attempt to protect their position. Unfortunately as it was a preliminary point, it did not form part of the judgement; but I was distinctly in Court when the suggestion that section 57 meant that licences could be issued outside the area was dismissed in a single sentence, with raised eyebrows as to why anyone should suggest that this was the case, by Lord Justice Kennedy, who said: "This information would merely allow a local authority to decide whether to issue a licence or not, and if the application was from outside the area it would be automatically refused."

I have to say it made common sense to me, but the most important aspect would be that the staff of Bolsover licensing department are not authorised officers of the surrounding districts, as required by the legislation, and effectively they have no measure of control over any operation, the recording of any records, the access to those records.

Quite clearly even the testing of vehicles is restricted under section 50 of the 1976 Act to "at such place within the area of the council".

In the Kennedy decision in the Murtagh case; you will note that there are quotes in there with regard to Dittah —v- Birmingham, where Lord Justice Kennedy was also the Judge in that case. If I direct your attention HHJ Kennedy's comments at the end of the judgement,
you will see that he states that if the licensed operator opens an office in a neighbouring district, he commits a criminal offence.

More importantly he says, "To keep within the law, he must then obtain a whole series of fresh licences, an operator licence, driver licences and vehicle licences, for the second area." I do not believe that you could get a clearer input on the issue that those operators who are outside the area need to be licensed in those other areas, NOT Bolsover; and that every day that they do not have those licences they are committing a criminal offence and are almost certainly not insured.