On the one hand, no point revisiting the cross-border misinformation disseminated in relation to the Gatwick Aiport dispute, as per last week’s post.
However, a subsequent report on the Sussex Express website contains a couple of other inaccuracies on the subject. The intention of this post, therefore, is to address those further details, and also to provide an overview and more detailed explanation of the topic, and this will be posted as a permanent ‘page’ link at the top of this blog to provide an ongoing reference for anyone interested. And to help, er, inform the debate. Hopefully!
But the Sussex Express says:
The problems started in 2015 following changes to the law via the Deregulation Act. It used to be that drivers had to return to the area in which they were licensed between jobs. But now they do not have to live or operate in the local authority area that grants his or her licence.
In reality, and as outlined below in more detail, the 2015 Act merely facilitated cross-border working rather than simply introducing something that wasn’t permitted before. There has never been any requirement for drivers to “return to the area in which they were licensed between jobs”. By the same token, where the drivers lives has never been of any relevance whatsoever. (Even in Scotland, and as explained below, drivers are basically forbidden from working cross-border in the way that Uber and hundreds of other operators in England do as a matter of course – however, where the driver actually lives is completely irrelevant. A driver could live in the Dundee City Council area (say) and work as a driver in the Fife Council area (say), in a vehicle licensed by Fife Council. However, the driver couldn’t routinely work in the Dundee City Council area, while such a scenario would be perfectly possible under the legislative framework in England.)
Earlier, the Sussex Express piece also said:
In 2020, 16 councillors signed a letter calling on Uber to ‘geofence’ Crawley out of its app as the firm ‘does not currently have the licence they need to safely operate in our area’.
It’s probably worth noting that Uber’s ‘geofencing’ (“A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area.“) policy is simply a voluntary arrangement, presumably intended for commercial advantage rather than anything to do with the licensing regime per se (although it may be portrayed otherwise for PR purposes). But ‘geofencing’ seems to simply divide the country into several regions in terms of Uber’s approach to licensing, recruitment and customer markets. In terms of the licensing and regulation issues relating to cross-bordering it has little relevance – each geofenced area may well encompass several dozen licensing authorities, and to that extent the cross-border pros and cons simply relate to a smaller number of local authority licensing areas. There are probably hundreds of local providers throughout England using Wolverhampton-licensed cars, for example. However, operators in Manchester or Liverpool (say) utilising such vehicles are almost certainly only using them to service local markets, despite in theory being able to cover the whole country. To that degree those operators geofence their markets (in the geographical if not strictly ‘virtual’ sense), but only for reasons like commercial necessity or preference. And, of course, the geofencing’s scope is very small in scale compared to Uber’s.
Anyway, what follows is the more general overview intended before the Gatwick-related stuff above was shoehorned in:
As outlined in a recent post, the cross-border issue in the UK’s ‘taxi’ trade is among the most contentious and ongoing issues. And confusing to boot. Therefore this piece attempts to clarify some of the issues, since of the hundreds of (mainly local, or regional) press articles about the subject over the years it’s unusual to find one without at least some inaccuracies or inconsistencies.
Which is often in fact because of the terminology used – a recent BBC News piece, for example, uses the term ‘taxi’ repeatedly, whereas it’s almost certainly also referring to private hire vehicles. Thus the t-word is used generically to refer to two very different legal concepts, or at least very different as regards the likes of the cross-border issue.
But the conflation/confusing of the t-word in turn maybe explains some of the technical confusion. For example, the BBC report says:
Drivers who are not in vehicles licensed in Blackpool can only drop off from their original place where they have a license and cannot pick up in the town.
Mostly nonsense, at least if the taxis referred to in the rest of the piece are mainly private hire vehicles. However, the above could be at least partly rationalised if the drivers referred to are actual taxi drivers, as opposed to private hire vehicles. Even so, the BBC’s paragraph is more than a bit confusing.
Thus the terminology is fundamental to it all. So instead of using the t-word in its strictest sense, below the term hackney carriage is used to avoid confusion. By the same token, private hire vehicles definitely won’t be referred to as ‘taxis’ in the way they often are.
But hackney carriages (HCs) are licensed by each of England’s c.300 local authorities. Only HCs can undertake public hire engagements, which generally means a hire secured there and then in a public place, namely at a rank or by being hailed in the streets or other public place. Fundamental to this is that HCs can only undertake public hire within the local authority area that licensed them.
Private hire vehicles (PHVs) are also licensed by each of England’s local authorities but, as the name suggests, they cannot undertake public hire engagements, and must be privately hired, which traditionally meant by telephone, but now includes electronic bookings, most obviously via contemporary smartphone apps. But, fundamentally, private hire equates to pre-booking rather than public hire there and then. Indeed, while each local authority adopts its own set of detailed rules under national framework legislation, one almost standard condition is vehicle signage making clear that the PHV must be pre-booked, or perhaps something like ‘advance-bookings only’.
Another fundamental is that while HCs have a monopoly as regards public hire in their licensing area, they can also undertake pre-bookings as well. HCs are thus a sort of public/private hire hybrid. PHVs, as their name suggests, are confined to pre-bookings. (And it’s also worth noting that many HCs confine themselves to public hire, while capable of doing both public and private hire. PHVs, on the other hand, are always confined to the pre-booked market.)
PHVs and cross-border working
But as regards the cross-border dimension, each licensing authority regulates private hire in terms of three different licenses – drivers (badges), vehicles (plates) and operators (the booking entity – any booking undertaken by a PHV must be done through a licensed operator). But to the extent that the three private hire licences are in place (called the ‘triple-lock’), then the vehicle and driver can work anywhere in the country (the ‘right to roam’). Therefore, for a couple of decades at least, private hire operator Delta based in Bootle has used vehicles and drivers licensed by Sefton Borough Council to provide services throughout Merseyside, encompassing several other licensing authorities, most notably the Liverpool City Council area.
Sefton Council possibly provided an early blueprint of low administration costs, processing efficiency and low barriers to entry for drivers and vehicles which has resulted in the Wolverhampton position today, with the latter council currently licensing something like 30,000 PHVs operating the length and breadth of England. As well as the straightforward myth that the likes of the Delta/Sefton scenario above isn’t possible, another oft-repeated simplification is that cross-border working was only made possible by the Deregulation Act 2015. In fact, the 2015 merely facilitated cross-bordering rather than simply permitting it.
Prior to the Deregulation Act, Delta used drivers and cars licensed by Sefton Council, obviously with the requisite Sefton Council operator’s licences. However, it couldn’t readily use Liverpool-licensed (say) PHVs for bookings received in Sefton, even though it might have had the triple-lock in place for the Liverpool drivers, vehicles and an operator’s licence. However, the 2015 Act permitted such ‘sub-contracting’, which was not possible under the legislation until then.
But this in turn provided the foundation for the Wolverhampton model. An operator in York (say), could now licence its drivers and vehicles in Wolverhampton, and apply for a Wolverhampton operator’s licence. It would then have two ‘triple locks’ in place, for both York City Council and Wolverhampton Council. And although substantively it would remain a York-based firm, it could use Wolverhampton Council for licensing because of the perhaps lower standards required for the latter licenses, and possibly also the cost and timescales attached to processing such licences.
And in the days of national (and international) brands like Uber and Bolt, the cross-border licensing regime has facilitated their own business models in terms of ease-of-entry and the gig economy. (Uber uses numerous licensing authorities for cross-border purposes – including vehicles licensed by Transport for London working in Essex, say – but in relation to the more conventional industry Wolverhampton is definitely the current ‘go-to’ authority.)
HCs and cross-border working
Slightly ironically, and counter-intuitively, the default HC licensing model is even more conducive to cross-border working. As noted above, although HCs can are confined to their own areas as regards public hire, with respect to pre-bookings they can work anywhere, and do not need a third-tier operator’s licence to accepting bookings – the booking and despatch dimension is unregulated.
Towards the end of the last decade the obscure local authority of Rossendale Council in Lancashire licensed thousands of HCs, mainly working elsewhere, and a number several-fold that which would normally be supported by the local market. Thus Rossendale was in effect the HC version of what Wolverhampton currently does with PHVs.
However, many local authorities decided to put a stop to this kind of thing (with regards to HCs at least) by introducing ‘intended use’ policies – any HC licence was dependent on a declaration that it would normally only be used within the area it is licensed in. Rossendale currently licences little more than 100 HCs, as opposed to nearly 4,000 half-a-dozen years ago.
On the other hand, while Uber’s vehicles are almost always PHVs, following the Rossendale debacle (and earlier Berwick in the far north of England had blazed the trail in this regard), Uber used Lewes Council-licensed HCs on an industrial scale in nearby Brighton & Hove, because of the latter’s higher-than-average conditions of driver and vehicle specification.
The Lewes/Brighton & Hove cross-border scenario also seems to have been wound down, and although HCs are still no doubt working cross-border on a more limited scale elsewhere in England, compared to PHV cross-border working generally, and Wolverhampton PHV cross-border working in particular, the HC element is likely to be relatively limited in numerical terms. However, it’s unlikely that anyone has ever attempted to quantify the numbers, and indeed such an exercise would effectively be impossible in terms of normal licensing information held by local authorities.
Scotland
Fundamentally, the Scottish licensing regime is not dissimilar to that in England. HCs and PHVs are regulated by the 30+ individual licensing authorities. However, the cross-border scenario is very different. Both HCs and PHVs can transport passengers across local licensing authority boundaries, and drive across such boundaries to bring passengers back to the licensing area. However, neither HCs nor PHVs can habitually work in other authority areas, nor, for example, routinely station themselves in other areas waiting for work. Therefore the Wolverhampton PHV scenario in England is simply not possible with regard to PHVs licensed in Scotland. Likewise, for the same reason the HCs licensed by Lewes Council and routinely working in the Brighton & Hove area wouldn’t be possible under the Scottish legislation.
This is very likely one reason Uber has been hesitant about entering the Aberdeen market, most obviously – with quite a stiff knowledge test for both HC and PHV drivers, using drivers in Aberdeen licensed by a local authority with less onerous standards simply wouldn’t be possible under the Scottish legislation, which provides the framework for each licensing authority.
NOTES
The single-tier local government model in Scotland means a more uniform licensing regime north of the border. In England, district and borough councils generally perform the licensing function, while numerous single-tier ‘unitary’ authorities are largely similar to Scotland’s councils in this respect. Ongoing amalgamations and shared services add to the significantly messier picture in England, while the Transport for London regime is different to that in provincial England, and encompasses all London borough councils. The English legislation initially covered Wales as well, but trade regulation is now devolved to the Welsh Parliament (and any differences enacted in Wales are not covered above. Likewise, the regulatory regime in Northern Ireland is very different to that on mainland UK.)