Taxi Driver Online

David Farmer
Head of Taxi/PHV Branch
8th June 2005

Dear Colleague,

Government request to all councils restricting the number of taxi licences in England and Wales outside London to review Quantity Control policies

According to our records your authority has not yet replied to Rupert Cope's letter of 16 June last year asking you to review your council's policy of controlling taxi numbers. My purpose in writing now is to ask, please, if you could respond by 30 June.

Mr Cope's letter of 16 June was sent to you in the light of the Government's response to the Office of Fair Trading's report on the UK taxi market, published in March 2004. The Government did not accept the OFT's recommendation that legislation which allows local licensing authorities to control taxi numbers should be repealed. Whilst the Government expressed a view that quantity controls were unlikely to be in the best interests of consumers, Ministers nevertheless took the view that the decision on whether or not to control taxi numbers should continue to be made by local licensing authorities. However, the Government response to the OFT report said that we would be writing to all local licensing authorities which controlled taxi numbers asking them to carry out a review of their policy.

Accordingly, Mr Cope's letter of 16 June 2004 asked local licensing authorities to carry out a review of controlling taxi numbers, with a view to removing the restrictions where a clear case for consumer benefits could not be made. It asked for a response by 30 April 2005. I attach a copy of the annex to Mr Cope's letter which listed some useful issues to address in undertaking a review of the policy.

As we have not yet heard from your council, I should be grateful if you could respond to the Government's request by 30 June 2005.

I would like to take the opportunity to draw attention to the point that the Government's request asked councils to review their policy on this matter. The key question is whether to maintain quantity control or whether to remove them, particularly bearing in mind the interests of consumers, not whether or not there is unmet demand in your area. We have received some interim responses from local authorities who say that they cannot deal with the request within the given timescale because they were undertaking a survey of unmet demand. However, the fact that a local licensing authority is undertaking a survey of unmet demand presupposes that a policy decision has been taken to maintain quantity controls; an assessment of unmet demand is not required if a decision has been taken to deregulate. So, if you are currently undertaking a survey of unmet demand, perhaps you could at least respond to us explaining why the local authority has taken the policy decision to maintain quantity controls rather than to remove them.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully


David Farmer

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Simply the best taxi forum in the whole wide world. www.taxi-driver.co.uk

You can't get any clearer than that but I suppose these councils will say it was a request by the Government not a mandatory order.

Regards

JD

So just doing a SUD survey is pointless, if you want to use it for justification.

I wonder how many councils have fallen into this trap, and wasted money on these surveys. Councils have seemed to find this the easy way out. But the Government wants justification, not numbers.

If taxi quotas are better for punters than a free and open system, then let all those restricting councils front up the evidence.

But I bet very few will.

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IDFIMH

No need. A request not an order.

So yah! Boo! sucks!

What you seem to be missing is that the survey folks will follow the DfT's best practise.

When councils spend tens of thousands of pounds they will have to follow best practise, it will not be an option not to.

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IDFIMH

A survey is a survey. best practise, is best practise. Are you suggesting that it will be best practise to lie?

Wrong site for lies.

What I'm saying is that the survey folk will adapt their surveys to meet the new best practise guidance. So the same number of people will be seen, and the same number of cabs will be seen.

What will be different (if adopted by the DfT) is that significant demand at night will be as significant as significant demand during the day.

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IDFIMH

So how does "best practise" aimed at councils, affect a company producing a survey that is fair and unbiased?

It will still be fair and unbiased, but will have to follow a new set of fair and unbiased rules.

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IDFIMH

You do make me laugh out loud, sometimes.

Don't forget, of course, that the draft guidance states that NOT restricting numbers is the best practice of all

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Guidance.

I think you will find that various gov departments give out guidance all the time.

And you will find that councils (if they want grants for this, that and the other), follow it.

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IDFIMH

Ask the phc if having unrestricted numbers helps or not , we as proffesional cabbies should be grateful these SUDs exist, otherwise we could look forward to spending even more time on ranks...FACT.

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Who's been "Editing" my mailbox then ...lol

we!

you have already stated that you aint a cabbie?

or is this just another lie?

so which is it???