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 for private hire and taxis was adopted in July 2014. Whilst there was no statutory requirement to undertake a review of the taxi policy, there was a commitment to do so at least once every three years to ensure it remained up to date and relevant. He reported that a 12 week consultation took place between September and December 2017, the responses to which were reproduced in Appendix 4. In addition a taxi policy review working group was set up by the Licensing Committee in April 2017 to facilitate the review of the policy; it had met 4 times and the minutes of their meetings were included in Appendix 2. The proposed revised policy was included at Appendix 3.

The Cabinet Member then summarised the proposals-

• Knowledge test-a number of changes to the current knowledge assessment were being proposed including replacing the written Highway Code section of the test with the higher practical driving assessment; introducing a learning day covering safeguarding, equality duty, law and conditions. All the proposed changes aimed to improve safety so that licenced drivers were fully aware of the duties and responsibilities in law so the council could be confident that Cheltenham taxi drivers were some of the best in the country.
• Three Strikes Policy-the purpose of this policy was to improve the council’s means of dealing with complaints, allegations and witnessed incidents of misconduct or infractions of a type which individually were not considered sufficiently serious to justify a review of a persons suitability to hold a taxi or private hire driver, vehicle or operator licence, but which may give rise to such concerns if repeated or if regarded cumulatively with other such incidents.
• Working Hours-whilst it was acknowledged that this would be hard to enforce on an hourly basis, the point was to lay down expectations of what constituted safe working practices
• Online criminal records checks (DBS)
• Vehicle emissions-the proposed revised policy for new vehicles was to retain 5 year rule for petrol cars (Euro Emissions Standard 5 compliance), Euro Emissions Standard 6 for diesel and any age for ultra-low emission vehicles-defined as 75g CO2/km and under. The proposed revised policy for existing vehicles was to phase out older vehicles so to get all petrol vehicles to at least Euro 5 standard by 2021 and get all diesels vehicles to Euro 6 standard by 2021
• Testing arrangements-privately contracting additional testing stations for licensed vehicles
• Grandfather rights-different rules currently existed for hackney carriage vehicle licence holders depending on the licence plate number. A number of hackney carriage vehicle licence numbers had grandfather rights attached to them meaning that as long as the licence remained valid, these vehicles did not have to comply with the council’s wheelchair-accessible vehicle (WAV) policy. The council had consulted on a number of options with regards to existing grandfather rights : a) to amend them so that they only applied to current licensed vehicles  and when the proprietor came to replace that vehicle they were obligated to purchase a wheelchair accessible vehicle and/or purpose built taxi; b) make no changes to the system c) amend the grandfather rights rules so that those who retained it could interchange between saloon cars and wheelchair-accessible vehicles without those rights being affected. The Cabinet Member explained that the majority of respondents indicated that they were against making any changes to the current arrangements but very few gave further explanation for their opposition and additionally none provided the council with an alternative solution to increase the proportion of public hire WAVs. At present only 22% of licensed hackney carriage vehicles were WAVs which was one of the lowest rates in the country. He explained that the Cabinet’s preferred option was to remove grandfather rights so that the WAV policy applied to all public hire vehicles. The preferred option must be evaluated in light of the consultation feedback received. The council was still of the view that it must improve the proportion of accessible vehicles on its public hire fleet and the existing grandfather rights rules have resulted in a very slow increase in the number of public hire WAVs. The increase of public hire WAVs in the town was almost exclusively down to new vehicles that have had to comply with the council’s WAV policy. The council also needed to be mindful of a number of other relevant issues. Under the Council’s public sector equality duty it had a statutory duty in the exercise of its functions, to have due regard to :

·         Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act

·         Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not

·         Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The Cabinet Member explained that the equality duty covered the nine protected characteristics including age and disability. The Government had made it clear that it expected local authorities to be proactive in improving the access to public hire vehicles and its revised draft Accessibility Action Plan published in August 2017 outlined proposals to strengthen its statutory guidance to local authorities that would seek to “increase the number of accessible vehicles” and consult on best practice guidance for taxi and PHV licensing authorities, which will include strengthened recommendations on supporting accessible service…”. The Cabinet Member went on to say that the current DfT guidance stated that it was for individual licensing authorities to reach their own decisions both on overall policies and on individual licensing matters, in the light of their own views of the relevant considerations. This guidance was intended to assist licensing authorities but it was only guidance and decisions on any matters remained a matter for the authority concerned.

“Different accessibility considerations apply between taxis and PHVs [private hire vehicles]. Taxis can be hired on the spot, in the street or at a rank, by the customer dealing directly with a driver. PHVs can only be booked through an operator. It is important that a disabled person should be able to hire a taxi on the spot with the minimum delay or inconvenience, and having accessible taxis available helps to make that possible. For PHVs, it may be more appropriate for a local authority to license any type of saloon car, noting that some PHV operators offer accessible vehicles in their fleet.”

The Cabinet Member highlighted that the council must therefore be mindful of the guidance.

• Vehicle standards and specifications-there were no proposed changes to policy on the suitability of rear loading vehicles and the council would keep this policy under review to keep it in line with best practice and Government guidance.

In summing up the Cabinet Member wished to emphasise that full and proper consideration had been given to the review and consultation responses that whilst there were some issues the majority of the policy changes were not contentious and represented a sensible way forward.

The following questions were raised by Cabinet and responses given :

• Nationally, compliance with wheelchair accessibility was 58% and this was expected to rise over the next few years with the aim in Cheltenham of 100 % compliance by 2021. In terms of process the Cabinet Member Development and Safety explained that the council always sought to change policy with consent rather than imposition and therefore there would be dialogue with interested parties including the licensed trade and users e.g. disability groups to discuss how compliance could be achieved within this timeline. At a minimum this would include assessing the impact on the future livelihood of licensed taxi drivers and cost of changing vehicles. He reiterated that the aim of the proposal was to maximise the opportunities to have WAVs in use without unnecessarily putting drivers out of business. The long term aim was 100% compliance and the best taxi drivers in the country.
• When asked whether Government would deem the council’s full compliance target of 2021 as too slow the Cabinet Member stated that the Government’s revised draft Accessibility Action Plan published in August 2017 had made reference to councils being slow to act and Cheltenham was well below the national average. It was not unlikely therefore that guidance and or legislation may be brought forward sooner on this.
• In terms of whether the Cabinet Member was confident that the policy was enough to satisfy safeguarding issues he highlighted that training and expectations of drivers well exceeded that of neighbouring authorities and the policy complied with Government guidance on safeguarding. He emphasised that the trade had been cooperative in ensuring compliance with this and he remained confident that the town had high quality of taxi drivers.
• Case law had found the issue of WAVs being less accessible to be a misnomer and that WAVs were a major aid to disability access.

Finally, the Cabinet Member Development and Safety highlighted that he had considered carefully all the responses to the consultation. He believed this policy to be a positive step forward. It was unacceptable that Cheltenham was the worst in the county in terms of the provision of disabled access taxi transport. Going forward the Licensing Team Leader would contact all interested parties for a series of meetings to discuss how compliance could be achieved.

RESOLVED (unanimously) THAT

1.    the consultation feedback received be noted;

2.    the revised policy attached at Appendix 3 of this report be adopted; and

3.    authority be delegated to the Director of Environment to take the steps necessary to implement the policy changes.