All Taxi Licenses must be the same!!

 The following case applies to Stockport cabbies who have been allocated a license in the last year. The conditions imposed by Stockport were unfair and wrong. All licenses issued by a council must have identical conditions. They won in Blackburn because they fought their corner rather than blindly accepting the councils terms. We understand Charles Oakes helped the drivers and congratulations to him.

 

 

PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday, 06 December 2011
For immediate publication.

BLACKBURN CABBIES WIN RIGHT TO PLY

Blackburn Magistrates’ Court overturned a decision of Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council’s Licensing Committee on Monday 5th December 2011 which had prevented three taxi owners from plying their trade. The Council was also ordered to pay their costs.
Charles Oakes of the Hackney Drivers Association Ltd, Mohammed Akbar and Shahzad Akram applied for licences to operate Hackney Carriages (black cabs) in 2009, however the Council delayed consideration of their applications until early this year, which time the Council had sought to freeze the issue of new licences. In July the Council conceded that the applications had been received before the freeze on the new licences had been approved by the Council and decided to grant three licences but on very different terms from those that apply to the existing 64 licenced black cabs within the Borough. The conditions that apply to existing black cab owners were that the vehicles must be no more than 10 years old when first licenced as a taxi within the Borough and cannot be relicensed after they reach 15 years of age. The appellants were required to licence vehicles that were no more than 3 years old and could only retain them for use as a taxi until they were 10 years old.
During the course of the hearing before the magistrates’ court the Council sought to argue that the new conditions were necessary to promote safety, comfort and the reliability and appearance of the Hackney fleet within the Borough. The Council maintained that its system of testing the existing Hackney vehicles, which done randomly at the road side and through two rigorous workshop protests each year is sufficient to safeguard those who travel in the existing fleet but they could not explain why different conditions needed to be applied to the new licensed operators.
The magistrates court allowed the appeal and imposed identical conditions on the licences of the new operators as those that apply to the existing fleet.
Charles Oakes, chairman of the Hackney carriage Association said “The Association has been asking the Council for many months to look at this policy and top have a single tier licensing system. The Council didn’t listen and left us with no option to take the case to court. I hope the Council will look at its policies carefully”.
James Parry, a solicitor advocate and partner and licensing law specialist at Parry Welch Lacey said “The magistrates’ court approached this matter on the grounds of reasonableness and necessity and concluded that the Council’s conditions were not necessary and did not promote any of the Council’s concerns. It is to be hoped that the Council will look carefully at its policy in the future as we are aware of another pending appeal.”