Taxi Driver Online

I know there has been dicussion about 'private hire ranks', this may be a bit different though...

In our area you'll often see the private hire cars parked up on the council's town centre pay and display car parks at night (obviously not paying to park though). There are no wardens at this time, and never a problem.

Myself and a couple of other drivers have been doing this during the day also, with no problem - until recently asked by a warden to move unless we're paying.

A call to the town hall confirmed that we were not entitled to use the car park even for short periods of time without paying.

Do you guys think it would be worth putting a letter in to the council to ask if they may consider allowing us to park in the car parks during the day for free?

Perhaps we could state that if there were people waiting for the spaces (which there never are) then we would move on. We could state that we are happy to abide by the other rules i.e only parking within the bays etc.

The thing is, we've done it for a while just with the wardens turning a blind eye. Also, parking in the streets is at a premium - surely this is safer for everyone if there aren't PH cars on every corner. The council are keeping on plating more cars, they should come to a compromise. Doubt they will, but they should.

Any comments?

You are not allowed to park your Pretend Hackney anywhere where the public can see or find you, except for outside your office, or office car park if you have one
So a PUBLIC car park is a no no
Outside your house is OK

so i cant go shopping in my PH which the LA force me to cover in PH stickers in case some short-sighted intellectually-challenged moron approaches me to take them home?


i shall post my address so that food parcels can be sent as the wife is now down to a mere 16 stone and the dog has chewed its own leg off due to hunger, the cats litter tray is now in need of new/clean cat litter as the mound of (barely) covered pussy dung is so high the poor little sod can barely balance on it to do the next one, the tray being the covered type he has a stoop like a chilean miner

we are also out of copies of the local free paper, not in itself a disaster except we had cut these into A5 size sheets with string through one corner as we ran out of bog paper (starship enterprise - wipes out kling-ons) 3 weeks ago, The Sun is a poor substitute for The Sleepy Hollow Bugle as the print used by The Sun has been known to leave a black deposit not unlike the visible signs of The Black death (AKA The Plague). Only last month this black ink caused 2 locals to be taken to the local undertakers in the belief that they were passed over when in fact just sound asleep and gave our undertaker a nasty turn by sitting bolt upright and asking for a cup of tea, luckily before the formaldahide went in.

Wirral, you should know that a PH should return to the licensed PH OP base after a job if no new job is available, never mind this adds to your running costs and chokes the planet with unnecessary CO emissions so long as "real cabbies" dont feel threatened that you may be mistaken for a "real taxi"

you could of course pop into halfords.....

That's interesting. I've never heard that before. Sometimes as soon as I dropped someone off in central London, I'm told to stay in central London in case someone books a job coming back out to Heathrow.

I also work on behalf of more than one private hire firm, so which office should I go back to? Any office I work for can ring me up at anytime asking me to do a job for them.

Up here you can only work for one office at a time. You have to deposit your council drivers permit with them. If you accept work from more than one office, you are deemed to be an operator and you would require your own operators license. Of course, you are then free to accept work from any other operator within your licensing area.

_________________
Grandad,

Why not?

The council has licensed you so they have, IMO, a duty to ensure you do your job properly and the punters are best served.

If that car park is near to where you have work then it makes sense for you to sit there, as opposed to 'ranking' on the streets.

_________________
IDFIMH

If you had a Berwick hack plate you could sit there til the cows come home

Perhaps you should let the council know that you're alternative is to return to base after each job and look at the horror on thier faces when the penny drops, you may also suggest that you might like to share the middle of road like the HC's do when the rank is full which is near always. Go sit in the carpark in 7 it's free

_________________
Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Officially the only place a PH can await work is the place licensed by the LA for its ops licence

try that with a 150 car PH operation...

I see, thanks for your answer grandad. Things are certainly different in London.



I've just been thinking about that if that does happen in London in the case of Addison Lee with over 2,000 cars! Even if, say 500 are working at any one time, are they all going to hang around the office in Euston?! (obviously doesn't happen as they get work all over London, and they'll have to plot up all over the place)

Not sure of the ops licensing system up in the bright lights, im out in the sticks, well past the sticks, at the end of the lane, and just by the last hay bale to infinity.... but on a clear night the stars are bright

That might be the case in your manor, but thankfully not in many more.

_________________
IDFIMH

I wait in Tescos

We have the same issue in Plymouth, and with the advent of their mobile camera car we now have to be constantly on the move whilst in the city centre, difficult when trying to get jobs on a plotted system.

A small group of us have written to the council asking for some sort of parking area, over the phone public protection dept agreed that in principle it is a good idea, but it is not up to them to implement

_________________
If it isn't black and shiny i'm not interested