Taxi Driver Online

The taxi and private hire driver and operator support fund 2022

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coron ... fund-2022/

This section provides initial information about a fund of up to £28 million to support the taxi and private hire sector. More detailed guidance will be published shortly.

The fund was announced by the First Minister on 5 January 2022.

Funding for drivers

You may be eligible for an additional payment of £750 if:

• you received support through the Taxi Driver and Private Hire Vehicle Driver Support Fund in 2021
• you are still active in the sector

Applying for payment
You do not need to apply for this.

The payments are being administered by your local authority on behalf of the Scottish Government. They will be in touch with you to verify your entitlement and arrange payment. The timetable will follow.

Please don’t contact your local council about this. They are working to provide you and other business sectors with support and funding. They will be in touch with you when they can.

Funding for operators

You may be eligible for a grant between £750 and £15,000 if:

• you received funding from the Taxi Driver and Private Hire Vehicle Driver Support Fund in 2021
• you are still active in the sector

Amounts payable will be differentiated and scaled, with a base grant payable to owner-operators with one vehicle, and higher grants for those operators holding multiple vehicle licences.

The grant payable is based on the number of vehicle licences each company, partnership, sole trader or trust (operator) holds, and which are currently active, as follows:

• owner/operators with one vehicle - a single award of £750;
• operators with two to nine vehicles - a single award of £3,000;
• operators with 10 - 49 vehicles - a single award of £7,000; and
• operators with 50 or more vehicles – a single award of £15,000.

These awards take account of costs arising from the operation of booking offices, where appropriate. Some elements of conditionality will be set out in a further update, relating to reductions in rental costs for drivers, and payment of the real Living Wage to booking office employees.

Applying for the payment
You do not need to apply for this.

The payments are being administered by your local authority on behalf of the Scottish Government. They will be in touch with you to verify your entitlement and arrange payment. The timetable will follow.

Please don’t contact your local council about this. They are working to provide you and other business sectors with support and funding. They will be in touch with you when they can.

This support is in addition to any other funding you may have received previously from the Scottish or UK Government such as the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme and the COVID-19 Public Transport Mitigation Fund.

Other funds available

Local authorities will be making separate payments to eligible drivers and operators from the Taxi and Private Hire Driver and Operator Support Fund 2022. This is a different fund from the ones on this page.

Details of these will be published shortly.

Unimpressed by that - one plate and you get £750, two plates and you get £1,500 each, three plates and you get £1,000 each


So nine plates and you get £333 each, 10 plates and you get £700 each

Who works these things out?


Eh? Operators are plateholders, thus distinct from booking offices, which is the third tier licence up here. So what have grants to plateholders got to do with rental costs to drivers, and payment of the real Living wage to booking office employees?

I think they're getting their licences mixed up here

And can't work out what the last two paragraphs of the notice mean at all

Anyway, despite all that, it looks like the vast majority of owner-drivers will definitely be getting £750 for the badge, and £750 for the plate

And looks like just a question of sitting back and waiting on the council to contact you on the basis of last year's grants, and the £1,500 will be paid out more or less automatically.

Hallelujah

I presently run two vehicles and had been considering getting rid of one due to this (hopefully temporary) drop in trade, that £3000 would help tie me over until the summer when things should be picking up again without losing a vehicle...Yet it feels like I'm pretty much back where I was at the end of 2020..Unsure of the future !!

That said....It's peanuts to the Re-Start grants being awarded to the Bus Operators by the Scottish parliament, those guys are receiving several hundred thousand of pounds each so as they can run their empty buses about...some of these companies are not even based in Scotland but still got a massive grant from wee Jimmy Krankies government.

Couldn't remember if you said you had one plate, and your wife had the other.

But that would show the nonsense of the 1 or 2 car thing.

If you and your wife had a plate each, you'd get £750x2 for the plates. But if you have both plates, then you get £3,000

It's a Partnership based Business with 2 vehicles so just as last time we should hopefully receive the 2 car allowance of £3000 and Two Drivers at £750....but the devil will be in the detail.

Ah, yes, I remember now. It looks like a carbon copy of last time round, with just the amount of the grants being different, so should just be a question of waiting for our councils to get in touch.

But they've obviously funnelled more of the pot towards plates this time - last year most of the cash went towards badges. That said, anyone with dozens of plates will still just get a couple of hundred quid per plate, if that

But funnelling the cash towards plates rather than badges will obviously be to your benefit because of that two-car anomaly thing, and it was an anomaly last time round, and is even more of an anomaly this time.

So last time I got £1,000 for the one plate, while you got £3,000 for the two plates

This time I'm getting £750 for the one plate, while again you're getting £3,000 for the two plates

But it's certainly more cash than I was expecting, so it's not as if I'm jealous or anything

I suspect folks with two or three plates.

_________________
IDFIMH

You should also be getting £750 as a driver so £1500 in total.

Had this happened in April I'd most likely have kept one vehicle instead of two but this thankfully changes the dynamics and Ill keep the two cars going for as long as I can.

Thanks for reminding me I've got a badge

But wasn't going to mention the badge aspect again, but you did say both you and your wife have got badges?

Anyway, that pulled article in the Glasgow Evening Times has reapearred, although it's much the same content as the TaxiPoint article, if anyone has read that. But this includes a quote from the Scottish Government - don't think that was in the first version of the piece, so suspect that's why the pulled it for a day or two


ADCU 'disappointed' with Scottish Government's Private Hire and Taxi Support Fund

https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/198 ... port-fund/

UNION reps have said drivers will be pushed "into further debt" as the Scottish Government released details of its Private Hire and Taxi Support Fund.

Last week, £28million was set aside for the trade which will see individual drivers being awarded £750, as well as a series of top-up grants being given to vehicle owners and taxi operators.

The support package was announced following a 'sit in' on George Square on Wednesday, December 29 which was led by the App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU), with drivers gathering in large numbers.

Within hours of the protest, ADCU reps were called to an emergency meeting with Scottish Government officials to discuss their concerns, in particular surrounding the trade's exclusion from Covid business support during the current restrictions.

Follow up meetings were held the next day and last week following the First Minister's announcement.

However, the union have said they are "disappointed" with the package as they say it doesn't go far enough to cover drivers' losses and only drivers who received a grant previously will be eligible.

Eddie Grice, Chair of ADCU Scotland, said: "We welcome the news that our trade will receive some support, but are disappointed that the level of support doesn’t go far enough.

"The headline figure of £28m sounds great for a headline, but it translates to just £750 for each driver and just £1500 for an owner-driver.

"These figures don’t come close to mitigating the loss in costs that drivers have felt since mid-December.

"We made a strong case to the Scottish Government and requested a one-off grant of £3000 per driver plus top-ups for operators and vehicle owners, but The Scottish Government has come in with figures much, much lower than that.

"£750 will help some drivers manage their debts a little bit, but it does very, very little in covering the losses they have experienced.

"We are also disappointed to hear that most drivers won’t be paid these grants until February.

"Drivers need immediate and urgent cashflow support to be able to survive January and the fact that the money isn’t coming for another four to six weeks will only push drivers into further debt.

"A further disappointment with the scheme is that drivers will only be eligible for this support if they received a grant from the previous rounds.

"This means any new entrants to the trade that have only been trading since last year won’t be eligible.

"These drivers are struggling just as much as the rest of us, probably more so if you consider that they probably have not clawed back their startup costs yet."

He added: "Overall, the Scottish Government has not gone far enough to support the trade here.

"If restrictions are to continue further than mid-January, it is imperative, vital, for the Scottish Government to look at these figures again and commit to delivering a level of support that is both meaningful and significant."

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: "We are all too aware of the impact that Covid-19 has had – and continues to have – on business and the Scottish economy, including for taxi and private hire drivers.

"The emergence of the new Omicron variant and the speed at which it is spreading brings even more economic uncertainty.

"We have announced a £375m support package for businesses and have now provided details on how £262m of this funding will be allocated.

"This includes up to £28m for taxi and private hire drivers and operators – bringing our total support for the sector since the start of the pandemic to more than £107m.

"Further details on eligibility for this funding will be published shortly and we are working with local authorities to ensure funding reaches eligible taxi drivers as soon as possible."

Who'd have expected this?

To be fair to the SNP Government (for a change), they did say that payments wouldn't happen till February, and that local authorities would contact potential recipients once the fine details had been ironed out, but the article gives the impression that those facts haven't percolated down to the grassroots, or at least those facts are ignored for journalistic or political reasons.

And if it's the 'conditionality' details for the plate grants that they're trying to iron out, then we may be waiting a while, because they seemed to confuse plates with the booking office licences, as I suggested earlier.

And if they think that £750 for one plate but £3,000 for two plates is any way to distribute grant money, then it's not hard to see why they're taking their time over the fine details

Looks like the information from the Scottish Government has been updated. Not been through it with a fine tooth comb, but this looks new, and basically looks like we'll be paid by the middle of February, so no great shock there:


Think the word 'their' towards the end should read 'your', though, or maybe better not to have a word at that point at all

This is also new, and clarifies what I said at the time about the apparent confusion between operators (plateholders) and booking offices:


So are PH vehicle operators which also operate a booking office exempt from this, or has someone just forgotten to include them?

Anyway, the important word in all of that is probably 'recommends', so it's of little real relevance.