Taxi Driver Online

Down here, and I would imagine every other place working in the 21st century, you submit your application with all the stuff required for that application to be passed, and you are giving the license at that time.

This is always the case for vehicles, and usually for drivers, unless further info is required for driver's licenses.

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IDFIMH

It's the usual V5C, MoT and insurance certificate, which are obviously unproblematic as regards checking and processing.

As I said, all the taxis are tested at the same time of year, and it's not related to the licence application. So I'll probably have mine tested in March, and apply for licence renewal for September. It's the same as how they approach the MoT essentially - as long as you've a valid taxi test from the spring then they'll renew the plate later in the year.

So I suspect the main hold up is the Disclosure Scotland checks for the licence holder(s). As I said, in Fife at least that's all taken care of by the council, so I'm not sure precisely what happens. But if you apply to renew on the last day, then obviously the council can't apply for and process the Disclosure Scotland clearance for a few days at very best, and more probably a few weeks in practice.

But there's no real debate about the Disclosure Scotland process up here. I'm assuming that that's because it's irrelevant if there's delays or logjams, or whatever, because the licence just continues in force until the council have completed the process, provided, of course, that the renewal application is submitted before the licence expires.

As I said, it's a bit like the old tax disc - you get one if you've a valid MoT when it's issued, even if the MoT expires next day. So the car would be displaying a valid tax disc, even if it had no MoT.

Of course, the difference as regards a licenced taxi here is that if it failed the council test while the licence is in force then they'd remove the plate until it passed, so to that degree it's not showing a valid licence plate while the vehicle is 'unchecked'.

Well there are pros and cons, I suppose, but at least we don't have to worry about the kind of DBS logjams and cock ups you have down south.

I recall that when the council introduced the new plates c.2000 I asked a council official why the licence date was used on the plates rather than the vehicle test date, but she just said that that was what they'd decided, so that was that.

So I suspect they were more bothered about taxis running round with invalid expired plates (our previous plates weren't dated at all, and could last the life of the car - I'm sure I had my first plate for about eight years ) than untested cars - as I said, if the car fails the council test, the plate would be removed anyway.

But of course the deterrence against properly expired plates is undermined by the fact that even when a cab is legitimately licensed the plate can still be out of date by a month or two because of the renewal process.

And back then drivers were phoning the council to complain about other drivers with out-of-date plates, until the system settled down and everyone realised that the way the system worked meant that the plates would often be out of date, so now people in the trade generally ignore it.

But just goes to show how little attention members of the public pay to stuff like this - if they did then no doubt the council would be contacted regularly about out-of-date plates, but I'm not aware that that's a thing, although I'd be very surprised if it's *never* happened.

Came across these on the Nottingham CPO Taxi Enforcement Twitter feed.

These were stopped because they were a couple of weeks out-of-date. Of course, these weren't Nottingham-plated cars, so there could be some sort of rational explanation that the Nottingham CPOs weren't aware of, but there's no further information provided as regards how it was all dealt with.

Interesting how prominent the expiry date is on the Wolverhampton plates, though

Clearly they have removed them, which is interesting.

However I suppose the council could say they were preventing illegal activity, and well done to them for doing so.

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IDFIMH