Brummie Cabbie wrote:
The muted idea of Fixed Penalty Notices would IMO be a very poor deterrent for transgressions of any new Cab Act laws.
The main important disobedience at the moment is illegal plying for hire, usually by PH or out of town PH and HC. In Brum, the vast majority of convictions for these offences result in many hundreds of pounds in fines and costs, usually in the high hundreds and sometimes over £1,000 in total.
The idea of Fixed Penalty Notices is just plain crazy as it would just dilute the penalties that are already being handed out!!!
And even these penalties of £500-800-1,000+ with up to 8 penalty points on the offender’s DVLA driver licence too, are just not getting the message across!!!
So to replace these with FPNs is just pointless.
I disagree.
The whole point of FPNs is that they are easy to issue, as opposed to the nightmare scenario of criminal prosecutions.
Many 100s of these things will be issued, compared with the handful of criminal prosecutions in some areas, and none in others.
I would imagine that repeat offenders will not be issued FPNs and instead find themselves before the courts.
In some respects I don't like FPNs for the opposite reason that you don't, I believe they will be too easy to issue and lead to them being abused by council officials.