Taxi Driver Online

Can't be bothered going into the details of this, but what's the point of having minimum licensing standards across the Greater Manchester area if each council can negotiate their own standards?

And it's confusing from the start. It talks about age rules to 'avoid a charge', which presumably means the emissions stuff, but that's not made clear until later in the piece. And then the interaction between the licensing rules and emissions rules is, er, unclear


Bolton: MLS taxi reforms called in after town hall debate

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23 ... ll-debate/

Sweeping reforms to the taxi trade in Bolton have been called in for further scrutiny after a heated town hall debate.

The reforms are part of the Minimum Licencing Standards scheme, which will come into effect all across Greater Manchester by the end of the decade.

The changes initially stated that taxi vehicles would have to be less than five years old on first registration and have been on the road for less than 10 years to avoid a charge, but Bolton Council leaders say their amendments will make these plans more palatable for drivers.

The changes are in response to the fact that around 2,000 hackney vehicles, approximately 11,500 private hire vehicles and upwards of 18,600 drivers are currently licensed across the ten Greater Manchester Authorities.

And there are also significant differences, particularly when it comes to policies relating to the licensing of vehicles, the calculation of licensing fees and the approach to proactive compliance.

In 2018, Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities agreed to collectively develop, approve and implement a common set of ’Minimum Licensing Standards (MLS) for taxi and private hire services.

Deputy leader Cllr Hilary Fairclough said: “We have got the best deal for Bolton of any of the 10 authorities.

“Our transition period in particular, which is to 2028, means that any driver at this moment in time driving any vehicle has until 2028 to comply with the standards that we have included.”

A meeting at town hall on Monday had been recommended to approve each of the 10 proposals for taxis set out by Greater Manchester, with amendments won by Bolton Council.

This included requiring all vehicles to be under five years old on first licencing by April 2028, but with no maximum age for vehicles “on to fleet.”

Taxis will also be required to comply with European standards when first licences, aiming for a zero-carbon emission fleet, by the same date, while a they will also be marked with a common livery.

Cllr Sue Haworth, who represents the Harper Green ward, claimed that the changes to the proposals showed that taxi drivers were not receiving “straight talking” from the council’s leadership.

Her fellow Harper Green representative, Cllr Hamid Khurram added that many of the drivers he had spoken to had expressed concerns.

Addressing the leadership, he said: “Why can’t we have a different age limit which is acceptable to the trade.

“You have your discussions with the trade, I have my discussions with the trade and they are not happy with a situation where they are struggling financially.

“The cost of living crisis is affecting everybody and at this time we are putting more of a burden on the trade and asking them to buy these vehicles.”

But council leader Cllr Martyn Cox said that, far from following Manchester’s lead Bolton had managed to secure a very different deal.

He said: “You talk about putting a burden on the trade, this isn’t coming in until 2028, there are no burdens on the trade until 2028 at which point we expect to get funding from central government through Greater Manchester to help cover the costs of it.

“And by not signing up to it we run the risk, high risk pointed out to us by our officers in the report, that we won’t get this funding.”

After the town hall meeting on Monday afternoon, the decision was called in for further scrutiny.

Almost 50 comments on the Bolton News website too, which is a surprising amount for this kind of thing. Also, a surprising number of them are actually quite astute and articulate, for a change, although obviously most are having a dig at the trade

All that's going to do is pi** off the other councils and the other council's taxi/PH trade.

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IDFIMH

Having just had a Facebook pop-up from the Taxi Driver magazine appear on my screen, the lead article was about Pendle taxis, 15 out of 16 inspected in a joint operation with police, DVSA and local authority were found to have serious defects. One vehicle had 4 wheel nuts missing, almost every other cab had lighting and other defects serious enough for immediate prohibitions from the DVSA.

That's what happens when you drop entry standards.

yup that was featured on here along with the half a dozen previous articles about Pendle where it appears the drivers are just used to getting caught

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39388

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

Not much new here, apart from a bit of politicking:


Bolton: MLS taxi scheme scrutinised at council meeting

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23 ... l-meeting/

Highly controversial changes to the taxi trade have been debated again at Bolton town hall this week.

The Minimum Standards Licensing scheme is set to come into effect across all of Greater Manchester by the end of the decade.

But in Bolton the proposal has been called in for further scrutiny after some of the borough’s drivers raised fears that their livelihoods could be impacted.

Cllr Paul Heslop, of One Kearsley, said: “This is a classic case, as with the Clean Air Zone, of not listening to the people and to the people it is going to affect.

“And when the people sometimes give the politicians a bloody nose its welcome because we need to listen to the people.”

He added: “It is a mess in Greater Manchester, and we will be sending a very clear message that we don’t want anything to do it.”

The MLS scheme was agreed on collectively by the city region’s ten councils in 2018 and was designed to bring in a set of common standards for the 11,500 private hire vehicles across Greater Manchester.

Taxis will also be required to comply with European standards when first licences, aiming for a zero-carbon emission fleet, by the same date, while a they will also be marked with a common livery.

But one of the most contentious aspects of this has been requirements that vehicles would have to be less than five years old on first registration and have been on the road for less than 10 years to avoid a charge.

Bolton Council has since won concessions, including that there be no maximum age for vehicles already “on to fleet” and that common liveries will not need to include Greater Manchester logo stickers.

But continuing objections over vehicle age standards in particular led opposition councillors to call the decision in for further scrutiny at a Bolton Council cabinet meeting at the end of last month.

This has now been discussed further at the authority’s place scrutiny committee earlier this week.

Labour's Cllr Mohammed Ayub said: “This is a matter of the livelihood of drivers and the safety of the public, so this needs to be sorted.”

But the council’s leadership has long made the point that they have already won concessions from Greater Manchester and have warned that not signing up to the scheme could entail a loss of funding.

Speaking at the place scrutiny committee meeting, Conservative deputy leader Cllr Hilary Fairclough pointed out that the policy had originally been a Labour policy.

She said that since the Conservative Party came to office in Bolton, her party had tried to work with the opposition and with the taxi trade to try and agree on the best way forward.

She said: “It originally started in 2018 when a Labour Mayor wanted to have minimum standards and the ten then Labour authorities.”

She added: “We went out and we got what we believed was the best deal for Bolton, no one else got the same.”

The decision will now be referred back to Bolton Council’s cabinet.

It's maybe not directly a quasi-judicial thing, or whatever, but they obviously view a lot of this kind of stuff in terms of the usual crude and tribal party politics, and a lot of it must intersect with stuff that's supposed to be non-political

Bolton: Changes proposed to controversial MLS taxi reforms

New proposals aimed at resolving a long-running controversy over sweeping reforms to the taxi trade have been made.

The Minimum Licensing Standards reforms have met stiff opposition from taxi drivers across Bolton in recent months and years over fears that a maximum age requirement on cars could force them off the road.

But the proposals, which also include a common livery and emissions policy, are now set to come back before Bolton Council’s cabinet next week with several crucial differences.

Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “In a nutshell, there’s three changes to MLS which we're proposing.

“The three changes amount to sticking with the current age policy in place.

“We’re not convinced on a maximum age and when you’ve got taxis in Bolton registered to Wolverhampton or wherever else, the argument that the age of taxis is somehow a problem specifically in Bolton doesn’t stack up.”

He added: “The second is that we’re keeping the livery policy as it is so there’ll be no common livery and thirdly we’ve pushed back the new emissions policy from 2028 to 2030.”

The previous proposal, which would have come into force all across Greater Manchester, would have demanded that taxi vehicles be no more than five years old on first registration and have been on the road for less than 10 years to avoid a charge.

There had also been proposals that all taxis be outfitted with a common yellow livery all over the city region, which drivers feared could have made them targets for vandals.

But now the new proposals will mean no maximum age, while the changes to liveries will also be scrapped.

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IDFIMH

Not wholly clear what the drivers' continuing gripe is here...


Bolton: Taxi drivers continue to raise objections to MLS proposals

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23 ... proposals/

Taxi drivers turned out in large numbers at Bolton Town Hall this week to once again make their opposition to the proposed changes to licensing standards.

The Minimum Licensing Standards reforms in question will come into effect across Greater Manchester by the end of the decade.

Changes from what was first proposed, which included charging vehicles over ten years old on a daily rate to be on the road, have been made but the opposition from taxi drivers is still strong.

Bolton Council’s cabinet met to discuss the latest proposals which were sent back for the scrutiny committee to decide.

The first stage of the MLS proposals were approved in September 2021 and now the second stage is been debated.

The cabinet proposed three changes including getting rid of a maximum age, getting rid of a common livery policy and pushing back the new emissions policy from 2028 to 2030.

But speaking outside the town hall Mohammed Akhtar, from the vice chair of the Bolton Private Hire Association, reiterated his opposition to the plans.

He said: “We object to the MLS, they have not negotiated with us properly, we have protested for the last two years that we don’t want this MLS, MLS affects every driver here.

“Neither Conservative nor Labour administration are listening to what the drivers want.

“We don’t want it, as simple as that.

“MLS needs to be scrapped.

“It is not necessary to put it on the drivers.”

At the cabinet meeting councillor Sue Haworth outlined what the council was proposing.

She said: “I recognise there are trade representatives calling for the scrapping of MLS.

“There are also licence holders who have not been calling for scrapping.

“We are being, as a cabinet, up front and straight about this.

“A notable number of hackney carriage and private hire vehicles will become nonpliant of emission standards.

“We have set an emission transition period of seven years to 2030.

“I have considered the seven year transition period that will occur alongside the continued effect of the government’s deregulation of the taxi trade in England and what we find in the Bolton borough.

“Our licencing authority is unable to have much effect at all on out of town licenced taxis from Yorkshire and the Midlands as an example.

“In the transition years we will be navigating help and support for drivers of hackney carriage and drivers of private hire that are emission compliant.

“I am not persuaded that our MLS two choices will precipitate any graveyard of older vehicles in Bolton.”

Speaking after the meeting, councillor leader Nick Peel said they were committed to ongoing dialogue with representatives from the taxi trade.

He said: "We are not going to change our view on the age limit, there will not be an age limit on vehicles.

"There is no time limit to have ongoing dialoge with drivers' represesntative.

"There are a number of issues outside of MLS that we would like to discuss."

Non-compliant, presumably.


By 'deregulation' the councillor presumably means the cross-border stuff rather than what was traditionally meant in the trade by 'deregulation'.


Clear as mud

Someone must have been reading my previous post about how confusing all this was (joke).

So here's the clarification we've all been waiting for with baited breath

Actually, the main clarification is in the headline, and the word 'clarify' is doing all the work. And while the article as a whole may clear it all up, I was kind of losing the will to live before the end, so didn't read it closely enough to garner that all important clarifcation...


Bolton: Labour and Conservative members clarify position on taxi MLS

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23 ... -taxi-mls/

Bolton Labour and Conservative members have clarified their stances on the controversial minimum licensing standards (MLS) for taxis.

The proposals have attracted many protests from drivers in the town who have claimed it will put them out of work.

Originally the plans were Greater Manchester wide and would lead to a ban on cars more than five years old.

However, changes have now being made to what is being proposed.

The new Labour administration has said there will be no limit on age, no common livery policy and the new emissions policy will be brought back to 2030 from 2028.

The second stage of MLS was raised at a cabinet meeting on Monday, June 26 by the Conservatives and was sent to the scrutiny committee.

Taxi drivers once again protested against the proposals around the same time as the meeting and some of them were invited to join it.

Cllr Sue Haworth, cabinet member for regulatory services at the council, said it was unclear why the matter had been brought there at all.

She said: “Labour on Monday (June 26) passed a policy of no age restrictions for private hire vehicles, reduced livery, and a seven year lead in time to emissions policy.

"The Tory decision three months ago was to have a maximum age of 10 years, increase livery, and less lead in time for emissions policy.

"This is Labour's reversal of the Tory policy.”

She added: “It has now gone to scrutiny committee.

"It is unclear as to the actual reasons the Tories called the decision in to further scrutiny as Cllr Hilary Fairclough made it clear that she supported the labour proposals and said that she did not know why drivers were objecting.”

But Cllr Fairclough said what she thought was an agreement between the two parties had broken down and the Conservatives now favoured scrapping the second stage of MLS.

She said: “Originally we felt we had an agreement with the main opposition party.

“They then put alternative proposals at the election.

“We then went back to the taxi drivers and their trade representatives.

“We had quite a long discussion with them.

“They want it scrapped and we agreed with that.

“Even though we were not successful in the local elections, the fact that we made that promise and we will stick to it.

“It is not really minimum licensing any more and all the 10 authorities are doing their own thing.

“We want it scrapped fully and we will go for that at scrutiny.

“We were lobbied strongly by taxi representatives to bring it to council.”

But this just about sums it all up nicely...


Which reflects what I said at the top of the thread months ago


But it's all interesting as regards the wider issue of the quasi-judicial thing.

So here's political parties politicking about vehicle spec etc, but if you're up in front of the licesning committee on a related matter, we're all supposed to assume there's zero politics involved. Kangaroo courts, much?

Not at all clear what was left after the original amendments, but looks like they've scrapped the whole lot


Bolton: Council leadership withdraw support for MLS taxi scheme

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23 ... xi-scheme/



Controversial reforms to the taxi trade across Bolton have been halted.

After months of debate, the leadership of Bolton Council have announced they are not supporting “Minimum Licencing Standards 2” - a policy which originally would have charged drivers for having vehicles that were more than 10 years old.

The plan had been fiercely contested by drivers across the borough, who warned it could “destroy livelihoods”, and town hall leaders have now announced a change in policy.

Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “We have decided that we are not going to continue pursuing MLS 2.”

He added: “We need to make one thing absolutely clear, the previous Conservative council had years to sort this out.

“The last decision on this matter was that there would be a maximum age limit on private hire vehicles of 10 years, they all voted for that.”

“Labour inherited this mess, we have sorted it out.

“This is entirely a decision of the Labour council.”

The MLS scheme was first agreed on collectively by Greater Manchester’s 10 councils in 2018 and was designed to bring in a set of common standards for the 11,500 private hire vehicles across city region.

Under its previous administration, Bolton Council agreed to the first stage of the MLS proposals which were approved back in September 2021.

Speaking at a debate on the subject last May, Conservative deputy leader Cllr Hilary Fairclough said they had secured better terms for Bolton drivers than those in other boroughs.

She said: “It originally started in 2018 when a Labour Mayor wanted to have minimum standards and the 10 then Labour authorities.”

She added: “We went out and we got what we believed was the best deal for Bolton, no one else got the same.”

But Conservatives announced earlier in July that they now favoured scrapping the scheme.

Since it was first discussed, drivers across Bolton had made their fears known about the scheme, which would have demanded that taxi vehicles be no more than five years old on first registration and have been on the road for less than 10 years to avoid a charge.

They had warned this could have driven them off the road while they also raised concerns that a common livery policy may have made them a bigger target for vandals.

Just last month Bolton Council’s leadership had announced changes to the policy aimed at meeting these concerns.

This included removing the age policy, ensuring that there would be no Greater Manchester wide common livery and pushing back the new emissions policy from 2028 to 2030.

But the Bolton Private Hire Association has continued to fiercely oppose the scheme, demanding instead that it be scrapped in its entirety, claiming that neither Labour nor Conservative administrations had been listening to them.

Now, following meetings between representatives of the taxi trade with Cllr Peel alongside deputy leader Cllr Akhtar Zaman and cabinet member for regulatory services and property Cllr Sue Haworth, the council leadership has withdrawn support for MLS2.

Council leaders now expect that the status quo will be maintained.

Bolton Private Hire Association Secretary Yasif Khan said: “We are very happy with the decision and we would like to thank the administration for realising it would have been really harsh on the drivers.

“From day one we were telling them it wasn’t affordable for the drivers, it would have been very difficult to get finance on new cars and it would have been very difficult with the second hand market as well.”

He added: “If its not broken, don’t fix it, as we’ve always said we already do two MOTs.

“There has never been any issue with safety and the safety of our passengers is always paramount.”

His collegue, Vice Chair Mohammed Akhtar added that he hoped that drivers could now come together with the council and the public to find the best way forward.

So what's been scrapped now, precisely?

Can't have been much left of the MLS to 'withdraw support' from...

Sections of the trade are just plain thick.

Instead of negotiating for better conditions, they just keep saying no.

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IDFIMH