🟦 𝐓𝐟𝐋 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐤𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡

Week after week we see masses of minicab's licensed in a single week. 

Going on the last released stats from TfL, in the week ending the 4th of December, they licensed 846…500 of which were new licenses, bringing the total of PH vehicles to 84,866, with a total number of drivers standing at 97,554.

Week ending 11/12/2022 just in today:

Private hire vehicle licences - 85,214 an increase of 748 on the previous week, there were 1.004 new licences issued

Private hire driver licences - 97,892 an increase of 338 on the previous week, there were 516 new licences issued

These totals are obviously too much for both TfL and NSL to handle, alongside the Taxi trade. 

We’ve seen for years the holdups in Taxi driver licence renewals, sometimes reaching over 5 months. But now TfL and NSL have admitted the are being snowed under with repeating vehicle inspections. 

So much so, TfL have had to put out a statement saying that Taxis and PH vehicles requiring a yearly inspection, will have their licence extended by four calendar months. 

But, and here comes the kicking…. the strict 12 year vehicle age limit (log book condition) remains. 

So if your Taxi reaches its 11 years birthday in the next few months, and you can’t arrange an appointment before it’s 11th birthday, you will lose the 12th year. 

This is the statement (TPH 16/22), put out by TfL:

‘Taxi vehicle and PHV licences which have expired or are due to expire between 1 December 2022 and 31 December 2022 (inclusive) will remain licensed for a period of four calendar months’

See their full statement in the images below. 

More tweets like this one appearing daily:

"So yesterday I was number 97 and after 3.43 mins you cut me off. Ive just called again now and am 117 in the queue . Oh and your online booking is currently not working”.

𝐓𝐀𝐗𝐈 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐒 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀 𝐁𝐈𝐓: 

The statement talks about a problem for December, but you can take it to the bank that this problem will continue well into 2023.

This is a failure of our regulator, not being competent to regulate!!!

What they should have done, when they first realised that there was going to be a problem, was increased the number of passing stations around the capital. 

TfL know from certain posts on social media, that most cabbies won’t be affected by this and so won’t care about their colleagues with older vehicles. So again this TfL engineered problem will again serve to fragment any animosity towards them. I can just see licensing directors and managers, sitting in their brand new offices sniggering at this situation.

It’s the same mess we’ve seen with licence renewals which have been out sourced to a cheap as chips company that can’t handle the latest volume of demand. Instead, drivers caught up in delays were falsely told they couldn’t work if licence expired. 

Under the Transport act 1985  section 17 subsection 7, if you have completed,eyed a full licence renewal application and submitted a current DBS check, then your old licence stays valid until you receive your new licence. This was confirmed in an email to me from both Sir Peter Hendy and Leon Daniels. This email can be found in this post I made a few years ago:

https://newandersonshelter.blogspot.com/2018/10/in-some-cities-it-takes-just-4-minutes.html

But when the smoke settled from Hendy and Daniels having to apologise to drivers who lost months when they could of been working, as soon as Hendy left and Mike Brown took control…..drivers were repeatedly told they couldn’t work. I’ve had to post Hendy,s apology many times over the last few years. 

Unfortunately, not every driver is on social media, so many still lost valuable working time.