Taxi Driver Online

Guildford taxi passengers to see cheaper fares after council wins legal battle to reduce prices

People will soon be paying less for taxi rides around Guildford . Guildford Borough Council announced plans to cut fares in 2015, but the move was blocked when the town's Hackney Carriage association took the matter to judicial review.

However, on Tuesday (December 5), the High Court dismissed the challenge, with the judge ruling the council's decision to use the data it did to set the fares was reasonable. The decision means taxi drivers must now begin charging lower fares by Wednesday (December 20).

A High Court order preventing the implementation of the new fares, originally approved in November 2016, will no longer be enforced. Customers will now pay slightly less per mile, which Guildford Hackney Association has previously claimed could lose drivers up to £7,000 a year in earnings.

Councillor Graham Ellwood, lead member for licensing and community safety, said: "We are delighted the High Court dismissed the challenge to our proposals to reduce fares. "The licensing team had gone to great lengths to consult with the trade to determine the correct input data for calculating the fares, which was recognised in court.

"Setting taxi fares is important to ensure taxi drivers can recover their costs and provide a service at a reasonable cost for the public. "It's vital we set the right rates to ensure this balance and to protect users from being overcharged.

"As a result of the High Court decision, we need to implement these changes. Currently taxi meters are still set to the old rate, meaning customers are now paying too much. "Taxi driver and proprietors need to make arrangements to change their taxi meters by Wednesday (December 20) and we have written to the taxi trade advising them of this."

As part of the High Court decision, the council was awarded full costs of £17,875.

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IDFIMH

Taken from the Judgement:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Adm ... /3141.html

After the new Taxi and Private Hire Licensing Policy had been adopted and before undertaking the statutory consultation required if a new table of fares was to be adopted for 2016-2017, the Borough Council sent a consultation questionnaire to all 200 licensed hackney carriage drivers and the proprietors of 193 licensed taxis on April 27th 2016 seeking their views on each of the costs to be used in the calculation of fares (indicating what the 2015 review had found that they should have been), further information about the conduct of their businesses and any other comments that they might have. This consultation closed on May 27th 2016. The Borough Council received, however, only five substantive replies to the 262 consultation questionnaires that they had distributed.

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IDFIMH

How much are the fares being reduced by?

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Grandad,

The new fares table adopted resulted in a reduction in the basic tariff for the first mile from £4.86 to £4.52 (a reduction of 7%) and for the second mile from £2.04 to £1.72 (a reduction of 15.7%). The amount chargeable for a journey of two miles, £6.24, a reduction of 9.6%, however, was the same as the amount that was then being charged for the same journey in Runnymede and more than the average charge of £6.20 for a trip of that length across Southern England. The national average was £5.68.

What would/could have solved this issue from the start was to ensure that (when the formula came in) any subsequent review of taxi fares was initiated by the trade, not by civil servants sitting on their arses waiting for their jumbo retirement pots.

That way if fuel went down and the fare formula numbers looked a bit iffy for drivers, then they wouldn't apply for an increase.

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IDFIMH

It is coming up to 4 years since our last fare review. I have sugested to a few drivers that it may be time to propose a change but I have said that any proposal would need to be justified with evidence, such as using a proven formula but they all think it is too complicated.
Obviously I can't do it for them now but I used a formula based on the isle of Wight formula when I did it 4 years ago and it was good enough then so it should still be good enough now. I have gone through it myself and it looks like an increase is dueso that drivers can at least earn the real living wage.

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Grandad,

This association appear to believe our learned friends should be substantially richer, the last case they lost was the colour policy - all cases are stated I understand ffs

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

Same old problem up and down the country, APATHY

Quite. Everyone cuts fares, so maybe the council officers have made test purchases to see how cheap they could get rides for. Drivers only have themselves to blame.

The abysmally low response is I'd say typical. When Shepway proposed something a few years back they had a similar number of replies. I could also presume in some areas the drivers' knowledge of the English language could be a barrier to them replying.