Taxi Driver Online

I have a school contract that has been changed because of a road closeure. Basically the job is only about 1 1/2 miles but the road closure makes the journey about double. The transport unit say that because the detour is less than 10 miles I have to stand the loss. The closure is for 14 weeks. I thought that they had agreed a £5 per day increase for the job but apparently not. I have given them 2 weeks notice that I intend to terminate this contract because I am not prepared to lose money on the job every day for 14 weeks. Have a guess who transport have asked to cover the job now? They have said that if they will do it they will be paid for it..........................................The parents!!!! Unfortunatly the parents are split up and the child lives with his mother who can't drive. It will be interesting to see if it goes out to tender if the price is more than mine.

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Grandad,

If they pay the parents more than 40p a mile it's illegal.

Do me a favour and send your council a FoI Act request asking how many parents are paid by the council to take their own kids to school, and what rates do they pay them.

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IDFIMH

The parents would need to be part of a Volunteer scheme before they could qualify as Volunteer drivers or take any kind of council payment, if theyre not Volunteers then they would Illegally be taking payment for hire or reward.

Check this link to see what the HRMC says about it.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/mileage/volunteer-drivers.htm

And add to that that if the are Volunteers then they would also need to be CRB checked as well.

I agree with what you say, and I'm getting the feeling that a least one member of the MoM gang is looking to bring this whole situation in front of ministers.

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IDFIMH

Is that a good thing or a bad thing...?

Interesting that the taxman is talking about profit. Surely if there is a profit then they need to be licensed.

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Grandad,

That's my reading of it all.

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IDFIMH

Talking of school contracts Derby City Council recently brought in a new points based system for tenders.Apparently it has come from Brussels and is heavily tipped in favour of large fleet operators.They even want to know your turnover for the last couple of years! The tender was as thick as the bible it was unreal and you have to state exactly what you are prepared to charge per mile etc.
Luckily my contract is with the County council and they have no plans to bring this system in....YET.
Is this lunacy widespread?
Regards
Steve
1984!

They are bringing in a similar sounding system in Leicestershire. You have to state how much you would charge for a one off hypothetical journey.
I am hoping that this is actually going to be used to weed out some of the people who put low prices on jobs to try to get the work and then expect drivers to do the work for next to nothing.

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Grandad,

Never heard of it, theyre changing the tendering process here but thats just on how to find tenders...the council still decide on who gets what on their points based system. but its heavily weighted to price over performance now, so much so that some ridiculously low tendering has caused a few to struggle to do the work they bid for...

I hope the EUs not hatching a plan...only an Ill wind ever blows out of that place, a more corrupt bunch of beaurocrats and back hander acceptors you,d be hard pushed to find...be easy to see why it would benefit the fleet owners over the individual simply because the small guys cant afford the bungs to woo the EU clique.

Yes.

That said it must be easier for councils to deal with one firm doing 100 school runs than 100 firms doing one each.

But I like the idea of drivers doing their own runs, and not having to wet the beaks of greedy operators.

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IDFIMH