captain cab wrote:
The report relies on guess work, there is no proof, by way of a survey or by way of asking the general public about taxi services, if there are enough taxis. How can the report justify no unmet demand without the proof of a survey? It will be interesting to find out if anyone will ask the council for a hackney license and then see what the council say.
That's the crux of the point we made when the Govt published it's Action Plan.
Any driver asking for a plate in Halton will just be told what the council has presumably been telling them for years - there's a quota, so sorry, no can do.
Of course in some areas people have the nous to challenge the LA, thus they will either get a plate or the LA has to survey.
But in many LAs there have clearly never been surveys, or if they have surveyed then it is well out of date, and wouldn't survive a legal challenge.
The Govt recommened that LAs delimit, but if not then they were asked to survey so that any legal challenge would not succeed.
But if the LA ignores the Govt, as Halton is prima facie doing, then we're effectively back to square one, and it's up to individuals, but frankly many drivers know as much about the law in this regard as I know about the theory of relativity.
The Govt's intention was clearly to add a bit of pressure effectively on the behalf of those in the trade and living in blissful ignorance, but the big unknown is what will happen if LAs like Halton effectively just carry on as before.
Let's face it, NO LA has yet decided to maintain restrictions AND properly address the Govt's non-binding requirements, so it'll be interesting to see how the Govt reacts to this.
There should start to be a rash of such cases.