Taxi Driver Online

Edinburgh taxi drivers should not have their license fees deferred any longer, council officials urge

Politicians in the Capital are being urged by Edinburgh City Council to vote against extending licence fee deferral periods for taxi and private hire car drivers.

In light of the coronavirus crisis, in March this year the council decided to place civic, taxi and private hire car licence fees on hold for a three-month period.

With the deferral period having expired in June, the council says that private hire car and taxi trade bodies are now requesting a further three-month extension.

Fees vary amongst vehicles, but generally to renew a taxi licence for one-year costs around £365 and to renew a licence to drive taxi or private hire car costs £118.

According to the council, loss of income to its Licensing Service between March and June will be around £740,000.

While officials have recommended refusing to extend licence fee deferrals, the decision ultimately lies with members of the council’s Policy and Sustainability Committee, who will vote on the issue at a meeting this Thursday.

Should committee members go against official advice and vote for a deferral extension, the council says this would raise overall loss of income to the Licensing Service to approximately £898,000.

However, Scott Blair, Chair of the Edinburgh cab branch of Unite the Union, says that taxi drivers plan to pay all licensing fees eventually and the council therefore should not be short of any income.

Rather than defer licence fees until September, because taxi testing centres have now reopened, Mr. Blair would isntead like to see drivers offered discounted fees.

Willie Thomson, regional officer for Unite the Union, said: “This is a trade in crisis, where the public use of cabs is down 70 per cent.

“It’s time for the City of Edinburgh Council to show its support for cab drivers in Edinburgh and we call for a reduction in the licensing test fees until the trade returns to pre-covid levels.

“Other licensing authorities have reduced or cancelled annual fees at this time and Edinburgh should follow these example.”

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IDFIMH

If I'm reading what Fife Council said correctly, ours seems a bit odd:




I posted that a couple of months ago, but for, er, technical reasons it disappeared

Which is why there's no capital letters, because when I managed to retrieve it, all the capital letters and paragraph spacing had disappeared

But I won't bother putting them back in, just to show everyone how annoying and more difficult to read it is when people can't be bothered with capital letters, and there's no proper paragraph spacing etc

Well the new badge has arrived

And, yes, we have been given an extra three months (in fact three months and one day, because for some reason the new badge expires 1 December 2023, but the old one expired 31 August 2020 )



But, as I said a few weeks ago, would have been a lot more help if they'd extended the current licences by three months.

If I'm correctly interpreting what the council is doing, someone who's renewed just before lockdown, and whose licences expire in 2023 will get an extra three months in 2026

Anyway, kind of wished I'd known how things would turn out, because I might have been better keeping the £1,600 or so I borrowed to renew my badge, plate and insurance, and claimed benefits instead - think I'd be better off that way

But of course I can't get that money back now, and the problem with the plate in particular would be if I wanted to renew it next year sometime, because our HC plates are restricted.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few plates aren't renewed, so whether someone else will take them up, or we might end up with numbers below the quota figure, I don't know. Uncharted territory

Anyway, and a more minor point, do councils usually crop the badge photos so closely? They always do that to our photos, so you can't even see my DIY lockdown haircut properly. Not that there's much hair left to see on that part of my head

I like the face covering.

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Grandad,

Had a wee joke lined up in response, but think I'll keep it to myself

Don't want to be accused of Islamaphobia, or similar


Careful readers will have noticed that I shouldn't have used the word 'renewal', because of course I was talking about not renewing my licences until things improve, in which case if I applied for a badge and plate next year it would be an application for a new grant, not a renewal. Which, of course, is the point, particuarly as regards the plate - because HCs numbers are limited here I basically wouldn't be granted another plate, assuming someone else had been granted my unrenewed plate in the meantime.

(Don't think a new badge would be problematic, but you never know.)


And while on the subject of the proper use of words, note the correct use of "who's" and "whose" in the above sentence

"Who's" is just short for "who is" or "who has".

So if you want to use "who's" in a sentence, just say "who is" or "who has" in your head.

So "drivers who's licences expire in 2023" isn't correct.

Because you're saying "drivers who is licences expire in 2023"

Jock facemask.

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IDFIMH

So that's the new plate on the car

Because of some quirk I can't recall now, my badge expires 31 August, but plate expires 30 September, although I applied for both at the same time, way back in 1998. But in both cases the last day of the month.

So the council is extending licences in issue at lockdown by three months on renewal.

But, as I said a few weeks ago, for some reason they seem to have given me an extra day for the badge, so it expires on first day of the next month, rather than last day of the month.

So if the plate was consistent with the badge, it would expire 1 January 2024

But in fact they've went the other way, and given me one day *less* than I thought I would get. So presumably the expiry date should be 31 December 2023, but it's actually 30 December, so not the last day of the month

But which I assume is because the plate expired on 30 September, so the council has taken the view that three extra months means it expires on 30 December

So basically I've got an extra day with the badge, but lost a day with the plate

Not a big deal, obviously, but I'm a stickler for detail, and I thought three extra months would mean three extra *calendar* months

And would have preferred it the other way round - that would have made it the only taxi plate in the UK to expire in 2024, even if only by one day?

Probably not, and at least in Fife there should be a few plates appearing in the not too distant future which expire in 2024

hardly it's plain white now had he painted his face blue with a tartan face mask that might have been patriotic after all his team have just qualified for a major championship the first (and possibly last) time this century !

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

Was trying my best to ignore Sussex's earlier hate crime

As for the Scotland game, didn't even know they were playing, and didn't even know they were in the frame for the Euros until I saw it 'trending' online.

That's how much attention I pay

even if you don't like a particular sport you should still take some pride from their achievements

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

Who says I don't?

Just lost interest over the years, and don't pay much attention these days.

And there's too much politics in all of it as well now. I mean, Sturgeon posted this on Twitter, which caused a bit of a ruckus:

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/stat ... 39396?s=20

But there's slightly more to it than meets the eye.

That was actually her celebrating when Jo Swinson was defeated in some election or other.

Which in fact caused a bit of controversy at the time.

Of course, Sturgeon will say she's just showing how she was celebrating Scotland's victory, but she knows what she's doing

Anyway, you'd think Scotland had won the tournament the way some are going on about it here.

I can feel another Ally's Army thing coming on...