Taxi Driver Online

Not sure there's anything particularly new here for readers on here, but a decent effort from MEN as regards the average reader.

But bit of a wasted opportunity with regard to what Wolves Council said about rowing the whole thing back, which isn't mentioned at all here.

And there's the usual quibbles - such as going down the 'rank' at Manchester Piccadilly and speaking to an Uber driver, and the usual plates/badges conflation and confusion - but no point going through it all in detail


Why is Wolverhampton Council licensing thousands of taxi drivers in Greater Manchester?

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... i-30213266

The Wolverhampton City Council coat of arms is prevalent on many vehicles across our region

Catch an Uber across Manchester and it's likely you'll notice an unfamiliar badge on the vehicle.

Many of the cabs have Wolverhampton City Council plates, despite the driver operating halfway across the country.

The biggest question is why the drivers of these taxis, officially known as private hire vehicles, would get licensed with a council 80 miles from where they work.

The Manchester Evening News has reported widely on the issue of 'out of town' licensing, and now we have taken a closer look at the figures to try to work out why this keeps happening.

How many 'out of town drivers' are there?

Within Greater Manchester, there are 8,952 drivers registered to the midlands-based council, according to a Freedom of Information request (FOI) submitted by the M.E.N. This number makes up around 35 per cent of all the private hire drivers in the city-region.

It is understood that the main reason drivers register in Wolverhampton instead of the region they operate in is because it's a regarded as an easier, quicker and cheaper licensing regime.

But it's left other drivers feeling angry. Some black cab motorists have been left infuriated by the fact they have to compete with drivers who have 'shopped around to get a licence under a less stringent regime'.

Wolverhampton Council have denied, on a number of occasions, that their licensing process is easier and cheaper.

Last year, the M.E.N went down to the taxi rank around Manchester Piccadilly station to hear what the drivers with the ‘out of town plates’ had to say themselves. A number of them argued that Wolverhampton was simply offering drivers a better service than they could get locally.

At the time, Uber driver Shakeel Malik, licensed in Wolverhampton, defended their checks, explaining how the licensing team picked up on the tiniest details wrong with his car before giving him a licence.

“People from everywhere doing it (getting licensed in Wolverhampton), not just here (Manchester),” he said. “There are checks with Wolves Council. They check everything about the vehicle and everything is properly done.

“Their standards are very high. Compared to them, prices in Manchester are high.

“It’s also easier to deal with Wolves Council. They give you a class in the morning (of licensing tests) and help us prepare.

“They help us through the process, and they follow the rules. I will agree that it is cheaper, that’s true, but it is not easier in terms of checks and standards.”

'Licensing behemoth'

The increasing number of private hire taxi drivers signing up in Wolverhampton means the council has become a licensing behemoth.

The midlands council has made £6.1m in the 2023/24 year alone from licensing drivers, according to finance papers from Wolverhampton City Council.

The sheer scale of the Wolverhampton licensing machine is evident in data from a recent FOI which shows they spend £5.9m on staffing a 123-person licensing team. They also have with £1.7m in reserves and more than 30,000 drivers on their books, unheard of for a single council department.

By comparison Manchester Council’s licensing team, one of Greater Manchester’s largest, only has 25 staff members plus two managers, with another 10 licensing officers who are non-taxi related.

Why do the council do it?

The question on the lips of many people is why would Wolverhampton Council keep taking in all this cash considering the money is ring fenced. Legally, the money generated from taxi licensing can only be spent on matters relating to taxi licensing.

It can't be used for big capital projects or propping up children’s services for example.

Wolverhampton Council themselves have explained on a number of occasions that this money goes into lowering fees for drivers joining them - which could further entice drivers to join them.

They say the council do not gain financially from licensing taxis. But they say they can’t stop drivers joining them because they legally have to process every acceptable application they get.

A spokesperson for City of Wolverhampton Council said: “Our staffing operation reflects the extremely high number of applications we receive per year, the work involved in processing them and our commitment to driver and passenger safety.

“From September 2023 – August 2024 our team dealt with more than 66,700 applications.

“Under existing legislation, if an application for a licence is submitted and requirements are met, then the application must be granted. As so many applicants choose to be licensed in Wolverhampton, we need to employ enough staff to ensure the process for both drivers and passengers is safe, efficient and rigorous.

“This means our team of 123 staff deals with a wide variety of issues which include processing applications, system administration/management, legal matters and customer services. They also manage compliance matters and run regular proactive enforcement operations across the country, including over every weekend. In 2023, 427 operations were carried out.

“The council does not gain financially from taxi licensing as fees are legally ring fenced for spend only on related activities. Where our income generates a surplus, due to economies of scale, we must return the money to the trade by reducing our fees.”

How Greater Manchester officials feel about the situation

A spokesman for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) said they are calling for a change in the law to clamp down on 'out of town' licensing.

Back in February, Greater Manchester mayor and chair of the GMCA Andy Burnham told listeners of the BBC Radio Manchester ‘In the Hotseat’ phone-in that this practice would be stopped by an incoming Labour government. Mr Burnham himself has concerns that the drivers licensed with other local authorities are not beholden to the same standards and that managing safety of passengers is not as easy if the drivers aren’t under their licensing arm.

Mr Burnham told listeners he had verbal confirmation of this from Louise Haigh, who was shadow transport minister at the time.

Mr Burnham told listeners on February 1: “[On] out of area working — the ‘Wolverhampton Problem’ — I was in Westminster yesterday (January 31), discussing HS2 with the government, but I was also with the shadow transport secretary.

“I got a firm commitment from the shadow transport secretary that out of area working will be stopped under a Labour government.”

There is yet to be any sign of movement on this by the Department for Transport, but they have only been in power a short period of time.

A DfT spokesperson told the LDRS previously: “We are aware of the concerns around private hire vehicle licensing, including out-of-area working, and will be considering ways to support local authorities with the issue.”

Commenting on the issue, a GMCA spokesperson said: “We recognise the concerns and challenges that out of area taxi and private hire operations can cause for people in Greater Manchester, and have been clear that the current system undermines our ability to have a consistent approach to licensing standards across the 10 boroughs.

“Ultimately, we need a change in the law to help us make sure that anyone who drives or operates a taxi or private hire vehicle in Greater Manchester meets high safety standards and is licensed in our area – and are continuing to make the case for change with government to strengthen our local licensing regimes.”

But with thousands of 'out of town' taxi drivers continuing to operate in our area, and with a 123-person team handing out licences in Wolverhampton, there are no signs at present the practice is slowing down.

Really? I thought that was more or less what they have been saying, at least in terms of processing efficiency, if not substantive safety standards and the like


Er...

And that's the 123 reasons as to why that council acts that way.

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IDFIMH

If the cab trade adopted a national set of standards like we have in the bus & coach industry, and the road haulage industry has similar national standards, then maybe there wouldn't be a problem. At least that part of the argument would go away.

The biggest bugbear in the us industry is the number of "community transport" "not for profit" operators who flout national standards that have been in place since the advent of horse buses. Yes, the Town Police Clauses Act of 1863 was it? Morphed into Public Passenger Vehicles act in about 1980 and altered abi to comply with EU laws.But it's the same law across the country.

the boss of which will retire with a fantastic pension

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

the answer is similar to the old assertion 'why does a dog lick its b*lls'

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin