Taxi Driver Online

Melton cabbies hit by hike in licensing fees


Taxi drivers and operators in Melton are set to be hit with 25 per cent increases in licence fees in 2015/16

Taxi drivers in Melton are set to be hit in the pocket after a council decision to increase licence fees by 25 per cent for 2015/16 (cost of licence increasing from £102 to £128).

Melton Council’s rural, economic and environmental affairs committee unanimously approved to increase the taxi licensing charges and also to introduce a three-year licensing regime for hackney carriage and private hire drivers with immediate effect - in advance of Deregulation Bill legislation being fully implemented.

Pat Reid, the council’s regulatory services manager, said that introducing a 25 percent fee increase would still only result in the council recovering up to around 71 per cent of the overall costs of providing the service (based on anticipated levels of demand and budgetary provision).

The committee also agreed for a revised ‘penalty points scheme’ to be implemented, under the council’s taxi licensing policy, aimed at increasing taxi drivers’ and operators’ compliance with licensing conditions.

The scheme allows a driver to carry a specified number of points for offences/breaches of licence conditions for a specified period without losing their licence. Where a licence holder accumulates 12 points or more within a 12 month period, the matter will be referred to a licensing sub committee to decide what sanction, if any, should be applied.

source: http://www.meltontimes.co.uk/news/busin ... -1-6782799

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

oh ffs

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Re setting of license fees for hackney carriage and private hire.



Dear Councillor,

This is something that I feel the officers have been getting wrong for a long time now and the way that the fees are being calculated will simply not stand up to scrutiny. The main reason that the “time recording “ exercise will not stand up to scrutiny is that all that happened was that staff members said that they spent X hours on drivers licenses and Y hours on vehicle licenses without any verification of what they were actually doing. There was no recording of any other work that they were doing. Many Councils have now had their fees challenged because of this unprofessional way of setting the fees and have been forced to take another look at the way that the calculations are carried out and in some cases make substantial refunds for over charging the most prominent one being in Cardiff where £1.1 million has had to be repaid. Councils are not allowed by law to derive a surplus from the licensing of Hackney Carriages and Private Hire licenses and I believe that I can demonstrate that although the officers state that they are not achieving cost recovery there is in fact a surplus being achieved.

I mentioned in my previous letter to the committee in March about the way that fees are set in Bournemouth. They have set out a procedure for each activity and timed each activity from checking application forms to entering the information onto the computer to printing off the license and making the plates for vehicles and the signing of the license by the licensing officer.

This process has shown that the time taken to carry out a driver’s license renewal takes 48 minutes and for a vehicle renewal it takes 50 minutes plus additional time for making the plates.

They have calculated that the cost per hour to recover all costs which includes all the overheads such as building costs, electricity, gas, water, stationary and all staffing costs works out to £117 per hour.

Unfortunately despite officers saying that they will carry out proper time and motion studies to ascertain these figures for Melton, I offered to assist with this myself because it used to be part of my job when I was in engineering, this still has not been carried out.

Without the proper procedures in place it is impossible to carry out the function correctly. For instance at the last meeting the head of regulatory services stated that he had just spent 10 hours over 2 days working on just one application. My answer to that would be to suggest that there was no procedure in place to follow or that the procedure was wrong. There should be no way that an application should be allowed to take that long without the application being either returned to the applicant due to errors or referred to committee for determination.

Back to Bournemouth, if we assume that the Bournemouth figure are correct and that the figures for Melton would be similar it can be shown that for full cost recovery the fee for a vehicle renewal should be £97.50 and the fee for a driver’s license renewal should be £93.60. The actual prices in Bournemouth when this exercise was carried out was set at £95.00 for a driver’s renewal and £100 for a vehicle renewal. There were additional costs to the vehicle license of £60 for annual plates and £20 for taxi ranks. It has however been pointed out to drivers in Melton that the Borough Council is not responsible for taxi ranks in the town so there should be no charge for this element.

Based on this information the current license fee of £102 for a driver’s license would seem to be almost right as it is and the cost of the vehicle license should actually be reduced.

The fees for new driver’s applications are higher in Bournemouth to reflect the additional work required with a new drivers application.

The fees for an operator’s license renewal were set at £105 with an additional £55 for a first application.

The cost of enforcement is not permitted to be included in the license fees.

Based on these calculations and the implementation of the 3 year driver’s license and 5 year operator’s license the whole taxi license function should take no more than 130 to 140 hours per year based on 100 driver’s licenses and 100 vehicle licenses and 12 operator’s licenses.

Regards,

Dear Councillor,
Following your decision to approve the resolution increasing Hackney Carriage and Private hire fees by yet another 25%, Could you please let me have a copy of all the data that you considered and the evidence that was used to back up that data which enabled you to reach your decision.
Regards,

Dear XXXXXX,
Could you please provide me with a copy of all the data that you used in compiling your report regarding Hackney Carriage and private Hire fees to the REEA committee last Wednesday and could you please include any evidence that was used to support the data.
Regards,

_________________
Grandad,

Well I now have the data but as yet no evidence to back up the data.
This is for the entire Licensing service IE Pubs, clubs, dog breeders the lot.
2015/16 budget estimates.
Employees £32,460
Premises £ 790
Transport £ 1,910
Supplies £16,460

Not bad so far is it. So the total is around £51,000
Ah but in the presentation tonight there was a slide about fees and charges that states "income from charges cannot exceed the cost of providing the service."
Great that is how I understood things. So why are our fees as high as they are? well the slide continues, "or needs to be invested in other complimentary services." WTF?
Hang on there is another paragraph on the slide.
"Councils have powers to charge for all discretionary services such as car parks."
Taking another look at the budget estimates I missed a line out which was.
SUPPORT SERVICES £187,080
So a service that was looking like good value at £51,000 is now £238,750
I will be asking for a breakdown of the support services charge.

_________________
Grandad,

When I asked our lot about the increase in fees and the money being earned by the licensing dept from Hackney Carriage and PH fees they seemed to close ranks.

[b]look into overtime checking out pub complaints.[/b].
Well I now have the data but as yet no evidence to back up the data.
This is for the entire Licensing service IE Pubs, clubs, dog breeders the lot.
2015/16 budget estimates.
Employees £32,460
Premises £ 790
Transport £ 1,910..................................??????
Supplies £16,460

_________________
Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Legally they must run a profit and loss account for the taxi and private hire function, in fact they also need to separate taxi and private hire.

What is the income from the taxi and private hire trade?

_________________
IDFIMH

ALL licensing activity is treated as one as far as income and expenditure is concerned. The split used is 40% of expenditure is on taxi/PH. The total income for 2015/16 is budgeted at £88,020.
I have managed to find the breakdown for the support services sum of £187,080.
central services 6040
information technology 6600
internal audit 1010
corporate management 1090
communications 2370
legal services 6840
regulatory services 58680
customer services 11340
environmental health 52150
development control 20790
building control 16100
central expenses 4070
187080
So it seems that taxi drivers are being charged 40% of the cost for environmental health, development control and building control.

_________________
Grandad,

Grandad i can see you being an INDEPENDENT COUNCILLOR VERY SOON keep up the good work COMRADE

_________________
All posts by this contributor are made in a strictly personal capacity

I AM PROUD TO BE A CITIZEN NOBODY'S SUBJECT http://www.republic.org.u

F88K EM ALL WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

BOOZE BOOZE BOOZE

Drivers license up from £102 to £127.50 for 1 year or £138 for 3 years
Vehicle license up from £202 to £252.50
Operators license up from £262 to £327.50 for 2 years or £350 for 5 years.

_________________
Grandad,

We have a vehicle that needs to be re licensed. I have all the paperwork ready and I have asked the head of service if i can take the paperwork down and watch as it is progressed through the system. The reply was sorry but it would be inappropriate for me to do so. Seems to me that there is something to hide.

_________________
Grandad,

Christ you need educating you dont ask yer employee you negotiate utilising the chair of the appropriate ctte .

all council officers are employees of the council, and no doubt well unionised what your requesting as a councillor would be unusual but productive in the management of services supplied to the Public so dont ASK ffs you dont demand you work into a study of procedures wakey wakey

"seems to me that there is something to hide " jasus what an insult to the workforce maybe you should consider what you put into the Public Arena in future ...........................for sure i know many Council employees well capable of taking you out for such a stupid comment ..............the way your going you wont last long

Be diplomatic stop insulting council employees in public ffs!

_________________
All posts by this contributor are made in a strictly personal capacity

I AM PROUD TO BE A CITIZEN NOBODY'S SUBJECT http://www.republic.org.u

F88K EM ALL WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

BOOZE BOOZE BOOZE

Where is the insult? The department claim that it can take 10 hours or more to process an application. I just wanted to see for myself what the issues were.

_________________
Grandad,

your quote "seems to me there is something to hide " on a Public forum from a Councillor if i were you i would get this thread deleted ASAP, your Party will not support you in such comments nor would any party for sure in my opinion the Council Officers would have no problem ostracizing you over this.

I would have PM'd you but cant get it to work i would like to see you have a long career as a councillor you wont PUBLISHING comments like this one "SEEMS TO ME THERE IS SOMETHING TO HIDE"

BE CAREFUL TT

_________________
All posts by this contributor are made in a strictly personal capacity

I AM PROUD TO BE A CITIZEN NOBODY'S SUBJECT http://www.republic.org.u

F88K EM ALL WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

BOOZE BOOZE BOOZE

It takes 30 mins from start to finish including making up plates..in Sefton.

_________________
Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!