Agenda item

The Committee will be asked to consider and note the performance data for the Taxi Licensing Service for October 2019.

Tom Ince (Principal Compliance Officer) reported that this was a new report to the Committee to share details of the Taxi Licensing Team’s performance.  Tom highlighted the following:

·       The number of licence requests that have been processed is up 41% on the same period in 2018 – the increase in volume is primarily due to the introduction of the 3 yearly licences in 2015/16 which are now coming around for renewal;

·       The already small team of 4 has had issues with staff turnover and two of these were newly recruited staff;

·       The total number of drivers licenced in Wiltshire in October was 1042 – over the last 7 months there had been a marginal decrease in driver numbers;

·       The south of the county has a higher percentage of hackney carriage drivers that use the ranks, but drivers are able to use hackney carriage as a private hire vehicle.  The Council have the ability to put more conditions on the drivers of hackney carriage vehicles and they monitor the number of wheelchair accessible vehicles.  The majority of these vehicles are used for the Council’s passenger transport contracts and only 12% of the public are using these vehicles; and

·       The Council were currently looking at ways to improve the number of wheelchair accessible vehicles and are considering relaxing the current regulations for these vehicles.  We are also looking at demand, but we are being told by the industry that the demand isn’t there.  For operators 1 in 10 vehicles must be wheelchair accessible but there are very few operators that have more than 10 vehicles in their fleet.

Julie Anderson-Hill reported that they were still awaiting the results of the national consultation for taxis safety but in the meantime had put in place higher benchmarks and more enforcement and inspection of vehicles and drivers.  They were also looking to introduce a review rating system which would see drivers having a 1 to 5 grading system in the window of the vehicle so that customers can see this and chose to use the taxi or not.

A Committee Member asked what the Team were doing in relation with climate change and wondered how far discussions had going with the trade as to the age of vehicles etc.  Julie reported that they are working with fleet teams regarding electric charge points and Euro 6 points which is the threshold for all new licences, but the Council cannot be specific at this stage as Euro 4 – 5 are still in operation.   

A Committee Member commented that in the data the South seem to have a lot of drivers but that this did not correlate with what was raised with the public speakers earlier in the meeting. Could they be trading out of county?

Tom Ince reported that they did not have information on this, but it could be that whilst this number are licensed they may only choose to work on Friday and Saturday evenings as the footfall and business is not there all week for a sufficient living.  That may be a reason why that figure is misleading.

Resolved:

That the performance data for the Taxi Licensing Service for October 2019 be noted.