westgatelad wrote:
Can I refuse the fare when I arrive? Or could I lose my badge if council were told about it.
As X-ray says, your company should really have a policy on this.
But, more to the point, councils should have a policy on this as well, and made this known, but as with the likes of screens, many are simply doing the usual bumbling/buck-passing bit.
But, as regards your licence, you can refuse hires for any reasonable excuse, and refusing front-seat passengers in the current climate doesn't seem unreasonable, so the chances of losing your badge over it would seem remote.
In fact, in the past wasn't there are standard condition forbidding driver from taking people with contagious/communicable diseases, but this gradually disappeared after such conditions became less prevalent?
In fact our conditions in Fife still state that you shouldn't take someone with 'vermin on their person', which I suppose is similar in principle.
So I wouldn't worry about losing your badge, but councils and operators should really be doing more, because it makes refusals more difficult when you turn up for a job (or, for public hire, when people roll up to a rank).
You could try asking your council, but I'd guess they won't give you a concrete answer one way or the other.
And even if councils and operators did have a policy, it might well be optional and up to the individual driver, which in turn could actually worsen possible confrontations with passengers, or lead to other problems like cherry-picking.