Written evidence submitted by Cabsmart (TPV0093)

I started my career in the Taxi & Private Hire trade at the age of 12, working weekends in a local taxi office as a telephonist. Now at the age of 67 and getting ready to retire next year I welcome the opportunity to send in my views for the industry.

When I started in the industry I worked as a weekend telephonist, working my way up the ladder to the main controller within a control room to evenutally being a General Manager and later being co owner of several start-ups here in Ipswich.

As you can imagine over the years I have seen many changes within the industry, having started when licensing was not required and working through when licensing was introduced.

Obviously licensing and regulating the industry was in my opinion a good thing, however over the years I feel it has gone way beyond what is required and is treated more as a “Cash Cow” for local councils rather then a serious industry.

Periodically the Government issue guidance to the councils for licensing and in my experience each council will pick out the best parts leaving out other parts that should be adopted. I therefore think that a national licensing authority should be formed.

One of the main problems for drivers is that they have to “Jump” through various hoops in order to obtain their licence and pay heavily for that privilege. If they then move to an area covered by a different licensing authority nothing is transferable and they have to start all over again. Surely, if a driver becomes a Taxi or Private Hire driver in one Town it should be the case that they are still a Taxi or PHD in another town. To take it to the extreme, if you are a Doctor in Ipswich and move to Cornwall you will still be a Doctor, therefore, why can this not be the same for a Taxi or PHD. The differences between Council licensing departments is what causes most problems with being licensed in one area and working in another. Some will have a car age restriction, others will not, some will require the driver to have held their driving licence for 5 years others will not, some want the car painted a certain colour, some want CCTV, some want safeguarding course, the list goes on. You then move on to the cost. We have to remember that in most cases people become Taxi/PHD because they can not find any other employment, so this means they could well be unemployed. Here in Ipswich, they are required to take a medical type 2, £150/170 plus an eye test £25/30, go on a 2 day college course £160/£180, take a rules and regulations test with the Council £30, Another £70/90 for a driving assessment, pay for the licence at £165 for 3 years, then they have to licence their vehicle, £35 for the garage test, £20 for the fire Extinguisher, £233.00 for the licence per year, plus Hire & Reward insurance which at the moment is upward from £1600 per year and this is all before they have earned a penny, how many unemployed people do you know that have this sort of money laying around. To compound the problem it can take up to 6 months before they can get the appointments needed to fulfill all these requirements.

I think cross border hiring has to be handled very carefully, as I have always principally worked in rural areas (Suffolk) to stop a company from being able to accept bookings from outside their licensing areas would cause immense problems for isolated people including the elderly and disabled. We take a lot of work which start and finish outside of our licensed area, if we did not cover this work these people would be left without facilities. I personally feel that as long as the operator holds the relevant operators licence for the areas they cover then booking work should not be a problem. Also if licensing was done on a national basis with the requirements for both driver and vehicle licensing to be the same then I feel cross border hiring would not be a problem, because drivers basically only licence in other areas if it is cheaper, easier or quicker. If licensing is changed to “National” licensing there should also be a time limit in which whatever licensing authority it becomes for instances “All licences should be completed and issued with 3 months”

Some of the problems again lay with the councils themselves. When licensing was first introduced the operators rules were that an operator had to hold the original copy of the drivers PHD licence and also his PHV licence on file. Now a driver can call the council and ask the Council to send them a copy which is then placed with another operator enabling that driver to now work for 2 different operators. Which means in turn until there is a problem the Council does not always know who that driver is working for. For example in our area now we will have drivers attached to our fleet, they will also work with another local company perhaps on a school run, and then also have the Uber app on their telephone so will do Uber work as well.

Ride hailing and platforms are not operating to rules applied according to the Operators licence issued. Example, in Ipswich we have just had Uber receive an operators licence, part of the conditions for holding an operators licence is that they must have a base within the area, and the drivers paperwork must be held at that base and be available for inspection by a licensing officer if required. Uber does have an office, however, it is not manned, driver documents are not held at the Ipswich office and any driver joining Uber has to go to London or Cambridge to be signed up. If the Council needs information regarding work done by an Uber driver they have to email Uber and wait until Uber is ready to reply and that is fact told to me by a frustrated Council licensing officer. Again this creates a 2 tier licensing regime within the industry. As a small company we contribute a lot to the local economy, renting premises, employing local people, buying local, advertising local etc. pay our taxes to our government. Everyone and every business within this industry should be on the same playing ground and playing by the same rules. There is nothing wrong with progress and of course competition is good but what has to be watched is the “BIG” boys coming along and pushing the local small guys out. So many people rely on taxi/private hire for transport and they reply on local company's who know them to serve them. Have any of you tried calling Uber, there is just no communication at all for the customer which is another thing that should be addressed when issuing Operators licences. All operators licence holders should have a manned local office.

Since COVID our local licensing department has never returned to the office, everything is done remotely via the internet, even collecting the licensing plates needed for the vehicles in order that a driver can commence work are posted out instead of being able to be collected from the Council offices. You have to telephone the office to ask or inquire about anything and sometimes you wait ages on the telephone before it is answered, on one occasion I left the telephone ringing for 1.5hrs to be eventually answered and told “Sorry we were all at lunch” Even on a car change the driver can lose up to 1 week of working waiting for his new plates to arrive.

Moving on to services for the disabilities group of clients. It is OK for all these disability groups etc. to argue for “Equality” and rightfully so, however, what is not taken in to account is when a driver turns up to carry a wheelchair user the process takes more time. A driver would have to go to the door, wait for the person to lock up all the house (Sometimes being asked to do this for them) wheel them out to the vehicle, get the ramp down, push the chair into the vehicle, ensure all the straps are applied and then when they arrive at the destination do the same again, this is a time element and an example being a non wheelchair client would be 2 minutes in and out of the vehicle with a wheelchair client you are looking around 20/25 minutes. Private hire drivers do not and will not take on this work, they therefore do not buy wheelchair accessible vehicles mainly because of the expense of these vehicles and for the reasons quoted above. As a company we buy our own wheelchair vehicles and employ the drivers so that we can offer a limited service. We also have the situation here in Ipswich whereby the Council will only issue a Hackney licence on the condition that the applicant supply a wheelchair accessible vehicle, however, the vehicle must be 4 years or less at the time of purchase, this creates a problem whereby a lot of drivers will purchase these vehicles get their hackney plate and then do not service the disability client, even when a wheelchair client goes to the rank the drivers will see them appear and driver off pretending they have another job, another problem with this is also most Hackney drivers are not assigned to a company so the clients can not get hold of them. Perhaps part of the solution would be to ensure that any driver driving a wheelchair accessible vehicle has to be assigned to a company and every company has to have a ratio of wheelchair accessible vehicles to their fleet size for example 5% of the fleet must be wheelchair accessible vehicles. Make licensing the vehicle cheaper to help drivers with the overall costs of purchasing more expensive vehicles.

September 2025