Taxi Driver Online

Taxi firm Castle Cabs in Bolsover closes as it faces huge bill for mandatory CCTV

The pressures of operating a modern-day taxi company have been laid bare by the owners of a business in Bolsover as they announce plans to close. The stress of being available 24 hours a day, seven days a week with low staff numbers has been cited as one of the reasons for the closure, in order to look after the health and safety of the staff.

However, that isn't the only reason given for the closure. The bill to install CCTV, as demanded by Bolsover District Council, has also been blamed for ending their business. "The council has dropped on us a very expensive mandatory CCTV installation process which after long hard thought isn't cost-effective for us to make it worthwhile having installed," said Castle Cabs in a statement.

Bolsover District Council announced plans to make the installation of CCTV in all taxis mandatory, however, it is the responsibility of the owners of the individual cars to foot the bill. Derbyshire Live wasn't able to find out how much it would cost to carry out the work, however, a document from neighbouring North East Derbyshire District Council suggested it could cost as much as £500 per car.

A similar scheme was due to be installed in Chesterfield, however, following a public outcry at the cost, the project was scrapped by the borough council in July 2022. Taxis in North East Derbyshire, however, are being told to install the cameras in their vehicles as soon as possible.

In the statement, from Castle Cabs, the company continues: "It's with a heavy heart we have made the difficult decision to bring Castle Cabs to an end. Mark's [the owner] priority along with the team is to provide a reliable and reasonably priced taxi service around the area.

"But also the health and safety of our staff is a big factor and we have had a man down in hospital over the Christmas period but he is slowly on the mend (but sadly out of action for 3 months). So due to only having a very minimal amount of staff it's made for difficult long hours and days which are affecting our private lives away from this industry, which I hope you understand.

"I strongly thank you all as loyal customers for sticking with us through these tough times, but I've had to make this hard, sad decision because the hours I do are getting near-on unsafe." The company has said it will continue to do work-related taxis and airport and coastal transfers only.

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IDFIMH

Some may say it's down to CCTV costs.

Some may also say it's down to being 343rd out of 350 councils in PHTM's fares table.

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IDFIMH

always been low fares in Bolsover that's why it's residents have a cruise club and can all afford to go on cruise ships for their hols !

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

So are they closing or not? Sounds like not.

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Former taxi driver

Sounds like there doing airport and coastal only, with I guess as I see hundreds of them in unlicensed vehicles.

The cost of the system and all associated installation costs will be as follows:
CCTV Unit* £512.33 +VAT
Installation £75
Additional Cameras* £95 + VAT (Per Camera) £25 (Per Camera)
Installation of Additional Cameras
De-Installation and Re-Installation (To move the system into a new vehicle)
£200 + VAT

So no where near £500

I have written many posts on councils interfering in the market and creating more problems from their thoughtless policies.

This is another case of bureaucratic stupidity.

This will create one or two causes on licensed drivers where these measures get introduced.

1) They will reduce profitability on the drivers where this becomes a requirement

2) They make fares more expensive for the public as the drivers will have to pass on their costs of installing the CCTV equipment

If number 1, it could drive even more out of the industry thus reducing the councils revenues from licence fees.

Not complying with the Regulators Code of Conduct. Councillors allow Officers to get away with this everywhere.

There’s only 6 Hackneys in Bolsover according to the stats and I can’t find any taxi ranks in this area so I doubt it’s down to the table of fares?

Had actually drafted the stuff for this article, but the newspaper's headline is misleading, and obviously isn't trade focused, so I was going to use the thread title:

'Bolsover firm to specialise in transfers to avoid CCTV bill'

Which, of course, others in the thread have mentioned.

Interesting point about Bolsover's lowly position in the HC tariff tables, though, but equally interesting is MCF's point about there only being a handful of HCs in Bolsover, with the HC tariffs surely being a factor in that regard.

So the HC tariffs may not be so relevant to the CCTV issue, and indeed Google suggest the firm uses names like Castle 'Taxis', 'Cabs' or 'Cars', so may in fact be PHV and setting their own fares.

But reading between the lines, the CCTV thing is probably just one issue of many, and maybe just the straw that broke the camel's back.

I mean, a small office deciding they'll be specialising in transfers and corporate work rather than the pishheads and old dears going half a mile with a pile of shopping bags? That's never happened before

It's worth bearing in mind that Bolsover is really only a large pit village albeit it has always been a town (with a castle) with a population of around 11000 and the pub trade dominated by Weatherspoon's so I doubt there's much trade except maybe Friday and Saturday night

In my experience towns that small struggle to provide sufficient work for hackneys to exist so not surprising there's only 6 there is a town just up the road from us pop circa 18000 that until about 20 years ago had none and even now only has a handful both hackney and PH

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

But we both know that in many areas, if not most, PH fares are lower than hackney fares, and only increase when hackney fares increase.

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IDFIMH

It's worth bearing in mind that Bolsover is really only a large pit village albeit it has always been a town (with a castle) with a population of around 11000 and the pub trade dominated by Weatherspoon's so I doubt there's much trade except maybe Friday and Saturday night

A bit misleading In Bolsover, the population size has increased by 5.8%, from around 75,900 in 2011 to 80,300 in 2021.

I think the 6 Hackneys are working on bookings, they have to be if there are no ranks.
Perhaps they are all getting around having an operator’s license.
With regard to cameras I think there useful when working on ranks but in Bolsover there pretty useless, I would like to see the councils list of violence committed in Bolsover licensed vehicles I bet it’s minimal.

that's the wider rural district and is quite small as districts go I doubt many of the villages in the area can support any taxi or ph service

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