Taxi Driver Online

Whitby Gazette

October 3, 2006

HEADLINE: Taxi is taken off road

POLICE checking taxis in Whitby found two thirds of them had defects and three needed to be taken off the road immediately for urgent work to be carried out.

Officers from North Yorkshire Police, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VORSA) and Scarborough Council's licensing and benefit fraud department carried out random checks on one evening in the town on a total of 22 Hackney carriage and private hire vehicles.

Out of all the vehicles, one was issued with an immediate prohibition order, three were issued with delayed prohibition notices and ten were given advice notices regarding defects.

Officers from the borough council suspended the licences of three vehicles although two were reinstated later in the evening after work had been done on them. The immediate prohibition notice was also withdrawn after work had been carried out.

Andy Skelton, the council's head of environmental health services, which covers licensing and enforcement said:

"The prohibitions are placed on vehicles for a number of different reasons and are issued by VORSA to take cars off the road if it is considered that keeping them on the road would be dangerous. The delayed prohibition notices give the drivers a chance to go away and rectify any problems that have been identified.

"Usually when we do these checks about half are issued with notices so the situation in Whitby was not much different from elsewhere in the borough. The police do a very thorough check. Generally, the problems are not so bad as to make the vehicles dangerous and the vast majority are back on the road the same day.

"The one that was issued with an immediate prohibition notice would be potentially dangerous. In the borough as a whole there are 97 taxis and more than 300 private hire vehicles."

During the operation, vehicles were stopped at random and sent to a local council depot for checks to be carried out by the VORSA officers.
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