Taxi Driver Online

Is it time to simplify taxi regulation?


WHEN is a taxi not a taxi?

This was the question posed by a court case this week which saw Ravinder Roath and Manjit Singh fined £500 for picking up passengers in Southampton.

They were both licensed to operate as drivers, as long as they were booked by customers in advance.

But after the two men offered to give lifts to city council employees doing random checks, they were caught out and stung with a £500 fine, costs of £225 and a victim surcharge of £25 with six points on their licence.

The UK operates under a two-tier system in which hackney carriage, or taxi drivers, apply for a licence from their local authority which allows them to ply trade from the street or at taxi rank.

Drivers of private hire vehicles also apply for a licence, but their customers must book their journey in advance otherwise they are not insured.

So would it not be simpler to scrap our complicated taxi system and regulate both systems as one?

Zulfiqar Malik, owner of Door 2 Door Cars private hire firm, which has around 100 drivers in the city of Southampton, thinks so.

He said: “I personally think it should be all one, like it is in every other country in the world. We do the same job.

"If you get in a hackney cab and you’ve had a few drinks on a Friday night, it’s very hard for you to trace that car.

"We get a lot of phone calls from people saying they’ve lost their phone, but because it was in a hackney they’ve got no way of finding it again.

“Pre-booked is fine. The conflict arises when a customer books us to pick them up near a certain rank and then the hackneys are asking why we are turning up there.

The 40-year-old, who has been in the business for around 20 years, added: “I’d be happy if it was all just one system – it would make everyone more accountable.”

But chairman of the Southampton Hackney Association, Ian Hall, disagrees.

He said: “It boils down primarily to insurance. A private hire car cannot be hired from the street – they have an entirely different insurance structure. You have to work for a company and you can only get jobs through that company.

“As a hackney association we do have a major problem with enforcement, which costs money. It’s carried out by licensing officers and needs to be improved greatly, particularly at the weekends. It’s not an issue that you can’t get a taxi – there are 283 taxis in Southampton and nearly 700 private hires.

“Drivers will work for a company but if there isn’t enough work for them they’ll go for a break, switch their radio off and go around picking people up.

“The system is a good system but it needs to be marshalled properly.”

His views were echoed by Southampton Test Labour MP Alan Whitehead.

He said: “I think it would be a bad idea to abolish the distinction because private hire licensing and taxi licensing tend to be of two different orders.

"Taxis have a different function and there’s a higher standard of reliability on private hires. If you’ve got a cab coming up to you you’ve got to know it’s the right one.”

His Southampton Itchen counterpart, Conservative Royston Smith, a former head of licensing at Southampton City Council, said: “If you completely deregulate then you have less control but if you did it would have to be done slowly and seriously because we’d be bankrupting 250 small businesses – the chaps who have spent a small fortune on their licence plates. If you were starting from scratch then you could have one tier in my opinion but there is a market for booking and there is a market for flagging. The two do work. Otherwise it’s just not fair on the people who have paid a small fortune for their plate.”


Owner of Newtown-based private hire company Aero Taxis, Abdul Shafiq, gets the best of both worlds with half of fleet operating as private hires and half as hackney carriages.

He said: “When you get people coming off cruise liners and trains they’re in a rush – they don’t have time to call a cab and wait for them.

“Plus we don’t have the space on the streets for more ranks. There’s already a big problem – we’ve only got parking for a limited number.”

source: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/politic ... gulation_/

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

New legislation is essential. but the problem is the trades lack organisational groups with the skills required to establish agreed demarcation between Hack and PH so consequently the "divide and rule" philosophy will prevail! Which is proving catastrophic for the industry's and the workers within those sectors.

I see no initiative's being discussed or the likelihood of that occurring at all ............................which means workers will work for peanuts be murdererd and assaulted on a regular basis, be over regulated and in some areas underegulated infested with workers unable to speak or write in English, have workers within it who are sexual predators, and rightly or wrongly Drivers will be regarded as second rate semi literate morons.

ONLY WORKERSWITHIH THE INDUSTRY'S CAN SOLVE THESES PROIBLEMS VIA ORGANISATION........................some hopes

reap and enjoy the benefits of not organising .....................................................mugs !

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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

Really?

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IDFIMH

Not a reason I would use to defend taxi restrictions.

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IDFIMH

Hackneys or Taxis are different from PH due to more than the differences in their Insurance structure.

Hackney Carriages are the original mode of public transport going back over a hundred years when they used to operate using Horse drawn carriages.
PH or Minicabs atarted much later and operate under completely different rules and laws.
PH have a lot of laws that they should operate under but in time those laws have been either diluted or ignored even by the councils who regulate them.
PH vehicles are required to return to their ''bases'' after each job and cannot drive around waiting for a job.
Nowadays in all towns and cities of the UK PH are touting i.e. picking up unbooked jobs off the streets and ferrying passnegers who are uninsured.
Local authorities turn a blind eye to all these illegal activities for reasons unknown.
Hackneys have space given to them where they are allowed to ''Rank up'' and are also allowed to be flagged down by users.
Hackneys are in most cases also required to operate using a purpose built vehicle which has capacity to carry wheel chair bound passengers.
These vehicles invarieably cost a lot to purchase.The current TX4 is around £35,000.
PH vehicles can operate using vehicles costing less than a tenth of that !

Show me where in the 1976 act it states that PH must return to base after every job.
Show me where it states on any insurance that the passengers are not insured in a PH that has picked up illegally.
Show me where it states that Hackney carriages have to cost £35,000. How much is a 10 year old WAV?

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Grandad,

My insurance covers me for the carriage of passengers for hire and reward; nothing in there about whether I am operating as a hackney or private hire car. Quite where these dreamers get their ideas about insurance being invalid or void is a bit of a mystery.

Has no-one ever heard of a ph car going from one job to another to another? Why return to base which may be a long way away when there's another pick-up round the corner pre-booked by phone.

The reason none Hackney's need to return to base is because that's where the hay is kept.


Bill

And everyone has the same ins as you... do they.

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

And apart from showing your lack of basic knowledge regarding the law.....your point was??...

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

this was his attempt to prove hes a MONG,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and he was successful

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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

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

here we go again so tell me how is it going to work when 500 or more taxis descend on the ranks and block the streets causing gridlock ?

How do you integrate fleets in towns and cities with an all WAV policy ?

will PH drivers be happy to upgrade their insurance to public hire and pay higher premiums ?

Will councils have enough resources to deal with issues that might result such as former PH drivers not understanding the concept of a maximum table of fares

Will PH firms be happy to no longer be in control of their fare scales ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

What existed before the 1976 Act?

When we changed from private hire to hackney the premiums went down not up.

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Grandad,