Taxi Driver Online

Remember that official Wolverhampton Council piece in PHTM towards the end of last year, which was essentially defending the whole thing?

https://content.yudu.com/web/43sy4/0A43 ... gin=reader

Came across that last night when looking for something, and recalled this nonsensical statement in particular, which is part of the few paragraphs near the end where they refute that it has 'low standards'. It said:


Where to start with a statement like that?

Well, er, for a start there's a slight contradiction in claiming you have high standards if you're refusing, revoking and suspending more licences than any other council, surely?

And, even more obviously, such a statement is hardly a surprise if you're licensing so many more drivers than any other 'council' in the country?

In fact, if the DfT stats I was looking at last night are the ones referred to by Wolves, TfL has the highest annual total of refusals, suspensions and revocations at 1,907, while Wolves lags behind at 1,206.

But, of course, TfL isn't a *council* as such, so to that extent Wolverhampton Council isn't incorrect. But since Wolverhampton wants to act as a de facto national licensing authority, then it's not really like a normal council at all in this regard. So the word 'council' in the statement above is doing a lot of heavy lifting (as people often say these day)

On the other hand, TfL licences c. 124,000 drivers, while Wolverhampton 'only' licences 43,000 drivers (the numbers are lagging a bit behind now - they're for the year to 31 March 2024).

So in fact, proportionately, Wolverhampton does refuse, revoke or suspended a lot more drivers than TfL - you don't have to actually crunch the numbers to spot that.

On the other hand, the Dft stats are a real rabbit hole, and even a few minutes spent looking at it all suggests that the figures lack a certain, er, integrity (and I don't mean integrity in the sense of honesty; more like in the sense of statistical integrity, or whatever...)

In particular, the stats on the spreadsheet are entries on the NR3S database of refusals, suspension and revocations.

And, according to the DfT spreadsheet, Wolverhampton revoked 327 badges, while suspending 447.

On the other hand, TfL revoked 946 badges, while only suspending 38.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I don't know their precise procedures for suspending and revoking. And I'm quite sure that if you compare provincial councils all governed by the same framework legislation you'd find myriad different procedures and approaches to this kind of stuff, never mind comparing Wolverhampton under one Act of Parliament to TfL under completely different legislation

But I don't think those figures are comparing like-with-like, and to that extent lack integrity

Anyway, more later, but if anyone wants to have a look at the spreadsheet (assuming they haven't seen it already), this is it here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... xi0118.ods

And, as usual, the layout is very confusing, spread out over several tabs. And, more confusingly, and again as per usual they seem to include county-level total stats among the list of individual councils, so unless you know your local authorities it might be difficult to distinguish the two at times (although the numbers involved are usually a bit of a clue; for example, the entry for Kent is almost 5,000 drivers, but I'm assuming this is the total of individual local authorities; you'd think this should be made obvious in the spreadsheet. Or West Sussex, which apparently licences 2,816 drivers? In fact, I don't think *West Sussex* actually licences any drivers at all, because it's a county council?)

Also daft is the final column which is 'NR3S entries per licensed driver'. Which just isn't intuitive at all, in my opinion at least. I mean, the figure for London is 0.015, while for Wolverhampton it's 0.028. Er, wouldn't that be more comprehensible and intuitive if expressed as a percentage?

Well, a couple of clicks on the spreadsheet sorts that out, and the figures are then 1.5% and 2.8% respectively. That makes a bit more sense, surely?

And as I was wondering about whether the NR3S database was compulsory for all councils at that point, because if it wasn't then a lot of the stats are completely meaningless. And there's a 'notes' tab on the spreadsheet. But someone seems to have started filling it out, but forgot to complete it

Here's what I'm getting at about the confusing regional/county stats, or whatever. The stats on the original spreadsheet are arranged as per local authority and regions, as per the other DfT spreadsheets. But this below is part of the spreadsheet rearranged to show the total driver numbers in order, so there the biggest numbers are at the bottom. Obviously London and Wolverhampton are excluded, and after that the authority with the most drivers is Birmingham

Then Bradford, Leeds, Sefton, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Knowsley, South Glocs and Kirklees.

But I've obviously missed some out from the list, which I think are pretty obviously not individual licensing authorities. But the potential for confusion should be obvious.

Anyway, ignoring the NR3S stuff for the meantime, what's interesting is how some of the big cross-border authorities are evident above, and they stand out like a sore thumb compared to the big city authorities in the list - Sefton, Knowsley and South Glocs. (Kirklees is mainly Huddersfield, and otherwise very urban, so it's probably not the presence of cross-border cars that means it about tenth in the list of local authorities that issue the most badges. South Glocs may not really be a cross-border authority either, at least in the Wolverhampton or Sefton sense - part of South Glocs seems to be in Bristol itself, and in fact the licensing section seems to have a Bristol address. Therefore unsurprising that there's maybe more cars licensed there than you'd expect given that it's contains part of Bristol that isn't in the Bristol City Council area )

(Edit - I think Buckinghamshire is actually a licensing authority, but initially I assumed it was an aggregated figure for several district councils actually issuing the badges. That's what I mean about the potential for confusion. Not a good way to present that stuff on the DfT spreadsheets, in my opinion at least )

I'm guessing that's the total for all the drivers licensed by councils within the county of West Sussex.

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IDFIMH

Good old AI.

It became compulsory to register suspensions of taxi and private hire vehicle (PHV) driver licenses for safeguarding or road safety reasons on May 1, 2023. This is part of the Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Act 2022. The National Register of Taxi Licence Refusals, Revocations, and Suspensions (NR3S) is used to record these suspensions.

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IDFIMH

Another thing that's missed from the stats is who gets the pat on the back for the enforcement of the suspensions and recovations.

The stats show how many council A has revoked and suspended, but not who was responsible for the revocations and suspensions.

Councils such as Reading and Oxford are always in TDO's news section, enforcing via the courts, but it is not often actually vehicles they license.

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IDFIMH

Thanks, Sussex. I thought the start date of compulsory NR3S entry would be easy enough to find, but despite all the effort I put into fannying around with the spreadsheet, I just couldn't really be bothered finding out the start date

But, anyway, that must mean that for 11 months of the 12 month period covered by the spreadsheet, entries were compulsory, so presumably that means the numbers on the spreadsheet should actually mean something?

Well, you would certainly think so, but a lot of them just don't ring true. Or, at least, lots of local authorities have totally different approaches to these things

Could spend days on all of it, but just a few observations. Rushmoor tops the table in terms of total database entries as a proportion of total drivers. In particular, it recorded 84 refusals, as compared to total driver numbers of 360.

Yet the likes of Knowsley, with 3,661 drivers, only refused nine

But compare Birmingham, with 7,399 drivers - it refused 296.

So is it really plausible to suggest that the figures above are comparing like-with-like?

Then there's the revocations and suspensions.

Crawley and Blackpool are among the most likely to revoke, and total drivers are stated as 944 and 957 respectively, thus very similar numbers.

And very similar revocations as well - 60 and 58 respectively.

But Crawley also suspended 30, while Blackpool only suspended one

Rotherham is a wee bit bigger in terms of drivers - almost 1,200, and with 58 revocations that's similar numbers to both Crawley and Blackpool.

Yet Rotherham didn't suspend any at all

So for three very broadly similar authorities in terms of driver numbers, they all revoked about the same in each. Yet in terms of suspensions, it was:

Crawley - 30
Blackpool - 1
Rotherham - 0

Then there are others which are maybe the opposite - lots of suspensions, but few revocations.

For example, Havant and St Helens have similar driver numbers - 526 and 554. And they're the two authorities in the country most likely to suspend - 110 and 81. Yet barely any revocations - 3 and 6.

So they're quite unlike Blackpool and Rotherham, which have significant revocation numbers, but barely any suspensions.

Then there's our old friend Knowsley, with 3,661 drivers, and not really much in the way of reputation. Yet revoked only two, and didn't suspend any

Or a big city authority like Cardiff - 2,244 drivers. Yet only one revocation recorded, and zero refusals, and zero suspensions

In fact there are quite a few showing zero entries, although they tend to be smaller authorities badging a few hundred drivers.

Yet the biggest without any entries is Calderdale (Halifax, mainly - right in the heart of grooming gang country) with 1,778 badges.

Make it make sense

Oh, aye - the whole point of looking at the stats was to evaluate where Wolverhampton sits in terms of all this, as opposed to their meaningless claim at the top of the thread.

And, in essence, Wolverhampton is pretty unremarkable in terms of the numbers it refuses, revokes and suspends.

And, in comparison to London, they're almost identical - London revoked 0.77% of badges, while Wolverhampton revoked 0.76%.

On the other hand, they're totally different in terms of suspensions. Wolverhampton actually suspends more than it revokes, while London hardly suspends any. Wolverhampton actually suspended 447 during the period. If they suspended at the same rate as London, then that would only come to 13

But there are obviously different approaches to all this in play. I'd guess that the refusals figures just aren't comparable at all, and they'll adopt very different criteria to what they regards as a refusal in terms of entering it on the database.

On the other hand, statistically you'd think revocations and suspensions would be pretty clear cut.

But in terms of how the actually go about suspensions and revocations, obviously there are some very different approaches in play.

And, of course, I'm assuming that all the relevant stuff has been properly recorded on the database to begin with, which is also maybe a bit optimistic

Any particular reason Uttlesford in Essex would have nearly 1,800 PHVs, 400 of which are WAVs?

Total population 92,000, and biggest town seems to be Saffron Walden with 17,000 folks.

Seems that Stansted Airport is within its boundaries, but surely that wouldn't explain more than 1,800 total badges?

And, according to the DfT stats from 2024, the precise total vehicles and badges (including HC) are oddly close - 1,820 vehicles, and 1,837 badges

I suspect many are part of a giant fleet of school vans working not only in Uttlesford but throughout the East and Southeast.

Canterbury is another area with loads of multi-seaters, I suspect many of them WAVs, that work all over the Southeast.

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IDFIMH

Thanks, Sussex, and that was actually my first thought as well, and there's been one or two pieces on here about it previously.

But I had it in my head that that was in Kent rather than Essex, and did a quick Google and couldn't find anything, so thought someone else would know

But that, and maybe the social work contract thing more generally, would explain the number of WAV PHVs (and maybe that's where TaxiPoint got their survey data from ).

And, on a similar theme, isn't Reform currently kicking up a stink in Kent about the whole school transport thing? And I think there's a head of steam building up about all that kind of stuff, and the SEND thing in particular

Anyway, here's some of the numbers which demonstrate the confusing nature of how the DfT categorises the stats from the various authorities - unless you know these things quite intimately, then you'd be forgiven for thinking that *all* of these entries below are for some sort of licensing authority, but in reality some of them are aggregated figures.

So this is part of the spreadsheet, showing 2,816 figures for West Sussex. But West Sussex doesn't actually licence any drivers, and the figure is actually Adur (131), Arun (237), Chichester (600), Crawley (944) and Horsham (188), Mid-Sussex (476) and Worthing (240) added together

I mean, who'd have known offhand that Mid-Sussex Council was part of West Sussex, along with Adur, Arun and Chichester et al.

Then Brighton & Hove in the list is a standalone figure, presumably because it's a unitary authority.

Then it's 2,231 for East Sussex, which is Eastbourne (511), Hastings (531), Lewes (791), Rother (144) and Wealden (254) added together. Then the Isle of Wight figures is also standalone, like Brighton & Hove

But all those numbers should be presented appropriately, rather than leaving it to whoever is viewing the spreadsheet to work it all out. And I can't really see much point in these aggregated figures anyway, which just clutter things up unnecessarily, in my opinion, even if they were presented more intuitively