Taxi Driver Online

Press release from the GMB

Council's licencing practises driving down private hire wages

GMB Trade Union - Council's licencing practises driving down private hire wages

Urgent action is needed, warns GMB.

The City of Wolverhampton Council has granted almost 90 per cent of all new private taxi licenses issued for the entire Midlands region so far this year, a new study shows.

GMB Union, which obtained the figures through a Freedom of Information request, has called on Wolverhampton Council to do more to protect the living standards of drivers.

The data reveals Wolverhampton issued a whopping 8,563 licences in the first five months of 2024 – more than 87 per cent of the new licences issued by some of the largest authorities in the East and West Midlands.

Wolverhampton issued nearly five times as many licences as Birmingham - despite being just one fifth the size.

GMB has sounded the alarm after workers in the industry have reported wages being driven down by excessive competition.

Wolverhampton Council became the first in the UK to crack down on Private Hire vehicles displaying signage on doors in an attempt to curb bogus taxis.

Kate Gorton, GMB Organiser, said:

“Wolverhampton’s private hire licence dominance is a well-documented phenomenon.

“But the fact remains that Private Hire Licenses’ give thousands of working people their income every month, including GMB members across the Midlands.

“More and more drivers report a flooded marketplace is pushing down income.

“The imbalance between supply and demand is meaning drivers are waiting for longer between jobs and are forced to compete with inflated competition.

“Wolverhampton bosses rightly point out barriers to capping application - but we’ve got one council essentially issuing licences for the rest of the whole region.

“The saturation of the market threatens the entire industry.

“We need urgent action to ensure standardisation across licencing authorities, in terms of price, testing and timescales and Wolverhampton has a key role to play in making sure that happens.”

Council / No of Private Hire licences issued 01/01/24 – 31/05/24

Wolverhampton 8,563

Birmingham 277

Solihull 239

Walsall 194

Dudley 117

Leicester 76

Telford and Wrekin 70

Nottingham 70 (combined Hackney & PH licences)

Sandwell 55

Gedling 47

Lincoln 44

Coventry 27

Mansfield 20

Derby 4

Charnwood 3

Oadby and Wigston 2

source: https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/wolverhampton%E2%80%99s-licencing-practises-driving-down-private-hire-wages

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

If they are counting west and east midlands together then they have missed a lot of licensing authorities out or was that just convenient to manipulate the figures to produce a false statistic

as the saying goes "liars, damned liars and statisticians"

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

The concerns many have about Wolverhampton need to be sent to central government, as Wolverhampton are basically in their parlor counting all their money.

I'm assuming even a Labour party with these clowns running it will listen to the GMB.

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IDFIMH

I just don't believe some of these figures, and these three maybe stand out. The article reads like it's newly issued licences (ie not renewals), and I just don't believe Wolverhampton issued that many new licences in the first five months of the year?

Could be wrong, and the figure would seem more plausible if it was renewals, but new licences?

At the other end of the scale, just can't believe Derby only issued four licences, even if it included both new ones and renewals. (No doubt a lot of cross-bordering, but still don't think the Wolves/Derby figures are comparable.)

Also not clear if it's about badges or plates, while the Nottingham figure suggests it could be about badges, since there would be no reason not to split a figure for plates, while the figure quoted maybe suggests it's about dual badges?

But reading the lack of clarity in the press release suggests either the GMB didn't ask a precise enough question and/or that for that reason the councils didn't supply comparable figures

706 PHVs licensed in Derby near the end of the period in question, according to the DfT stats

are the dft stats that up to date?

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

The latest DfT spreadsheets are apparently the numbers as at 1 April 2024

The GMB's numbers above apparently cover the whole of January to May 2024, so the DfT stats apparently show the static numbers towards the end of that period

I think this is the link to the main DfT spreadsheet here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... xi0104.ods

If anyone isn't familiar with the spreadheets, they can be viewed in OpenOffice, which is a free download.

The spreadsheets are very cumbersome to view in my opinion, and to see the main numbers in the one above you need to go to the tabs along the bottom and select the fourth and fifth tabs along (which may be out of view when you first look at the sheet).

The tabs are captioned as follows, from the first tab on the left:

- Cover sheet
- Table of contents
- Notes
- TAXI0104_2023
- TAXI0104_2023

And the last two tabs contain the main stats, and the first are the 2023 figures, and the second the latest 2024 stats, surprise surprise

The Notes tab actually includes some information on amalgamations and the like, which will obviously be relevant to comparing the stats between the two years.

Can't see anything about cross-border working, though, which is the main reason a lot of the figures are misleading

To be fair, I've barely looked at the vast majority of the spreadsheets and the related bumph the DfT produces these days for the annual stats, so maybe there's stuff about cross-border caveats and the like in all of that

I don't like the spreadsheet configurations, they look like the work of a three-year-old.

That said, I suspect less than 100 people in the UK actually ever look at them.

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IDFIMH

To be fair, I'm sure there are 100s of licensing councillors and officials spending several hours per day poring over them

Don't know if this will work, but I've made some format amendments to the spreadsheets and uploaded the file to Google drive.

And hopefully the format amendments make it a bit easier to move around and view the sheets than the original format - it actually looks better presented in Google sheets than in the original OpenOffice spreadsheet - you can even see all the tabs along the bottom

Or if the link works anyone should be able to download the file and view it in Open Office (not sure if it would display in Excel or other spreasheet packages, but it might, because although it's quite a big sheet, it's not particularly complex from a technical perspective

Anyway, the most important format amendment is to freeze the titles above each column and also the local authority names, so they'll stay in view as you move around the numbers - a big problem with the original spreadsheet is that once you're well into the numbers you can't see what column they're in (eg WAV HC numbers) or which local authority they relate to

I've also narrowed the columns a bit so that more information can be viewed at the same time.

And on the 2024 sheet I've changed the column descriptions to make them less cumbersome (eg 'wheelchair accessible taxis' becomes 'WAV HCs', but just left the 2023 columns as they are).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z9qgp0 ... drive_link

When viewing the sheet on Google it's actually easier to move around the numbers using my laptop trackpad, which I find never works well in the actual OpenOffice spreadsheet.

One obvious glitch I can see - at least on my laptop - is that in Google the last column ('total driver licenses issued') doesn't display fully

Don't know why that might be, but it should display OK in OpenOffice.

If anyone's trying to view/download the spreadsheet, that Google stuff isn't something I use very much, and assumed anyone could view the spreadsheet and/or download the file automatically.

But it seems I get an email via Google Mail if anyone wants to download the file (not sure about just viewing the spreadsheet via the link above). And I barely use my Google Mail account, so didn't notice at first - now done.

But will keep an eye on it and authorise any requests etc. Don't all rush at once

It says something about the civil servants in the DfT that a taxi driver somewhere up north has to make their statistics readable.

Thank you SW.

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IDFIMH

Haven't really looked at all the various spreadsheets the DfT produces these days, but kind of reminds me of the PHTM fare tables once upon a time, which they started to analyse in ridiculous detail, and the problem was that, while more detail would have been useful, the detail they actually presented was just confusing and largely useless (don't really read PHTM these days, but think they dumped the tables I'm talking about).

By the same token, not sure to what extent the blizzard of information presented by the DfT is really of much use. And, for example, aren't they providing info on vehicle emissions etc by licensing authority, while the most significant licensing authority outside London doesn't even retain such information in its records?