Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member Development and Safety

The Cabinet Member Development and Safety introduced the report and explained that the Council’s current Licensing policy, guidance and conditions for private hire and taxis (taxi policy) was adopted in July 2014. He stated that whilst there was no statutory requirement to undertake a review of the taxi policy, there was a commitment set out in the policy to do so at least once every three years to ensure the policy remained up to date and relevant.

The Cabinet Member explained that to facilitate the review and better engage with key stakeholders a taxi policy review working group was set up by the Licensing Committee in April this year. Representatives from the trade, council officers and Councillors sat on the working group

He highlighted that the key points of the proposed policy changes were as follows :

·         Introduction of a “three strikes policy” to enable the council to be more effective in its ability to deal with lower level types of complaints and misdemeanours not captured by the “relevance of convictions policy”

·         Amendments to the knowledge test to include the introduction of a learning day to cover safeguarding, equalities training and awareness, and taxi and private hire rules

·         Working hours-to set out a reasonable expectation on working hours for licence holders, implementing a mechanism whereby licence holders may need to keep a record of their working hours and to submit these records to the council

·         Vehicle Standards-phase out older vehicles so as to get all petrol vehicles to at least Euro 5 standard by 2020 and get all diesel vehicles to Euro 6 standard by 2020

·         Fitness standards-apply higher fitness standards for licensed vehicles by limiting new permitted wheelchair accessible vehicles to those that are side-loading only. Rear loading vehicles currently on the public hire fleet will be gradually phased out when these vehicles are replaced

In response to comments made by Cabinet with regard to the “three strikes” rule the Cabinet Member explained that the collection of three offences were not captured by the “Relevance of convictions” policy but could be serious enough to be acted on in terms of being subject to an automatic review of their licence. He agreed that some of the infractions should be given a higher weighting than others. With regard to a question on working hours the Cabinet Member explained that government guidance was loose but the council should be able to tackle abuse of the system.  He stressed that this was a consultation exercise and the most important objective was to protect the public. The current system was being undermined by double strike offences or the amount of hours worked. Members discussed the obligatory use of a tacograph such as that used by hgv drivers to address the situation. The Cabinet Member informed that Government felt that a similar requirement placed on taxi drivers would be deemed unreasonable. However, he felt that if this was suggested during the consultation exercise then it could be considered further. In response to a comment on taxi drivers coming in to the borough for business he highlighted that the rules which applied to licensing taxis in Cheltenham only applied to Cheltenham and the council had no powers to prevent outsiders touting inside the borough as they were licensed by other authorities.

RESOLVED THAT

the proposed policy changes as outlined in Appendix 2, 3 and 4 of this report be approved for consultation.