A COUNCIL fears it could face legal action because of its refusal to allow a new type of taxi on the streets.
There was a furious row when plans to grant licences to the Peugeot E7, as well as traditional Hackney Carriages, were debated at Blackburn Town Hall last week.
The vehicles, which supporters say are more wheelchair-friendly than other taxis, are already in use in most parts of the country.
And Blackburn with Darwen Council officials fear they could be vuln-erable to a costly legal challenge if they do not accept the model, follow-ing a similar courtroom battle in Liverpool.
But about 50 Hackney drivers came to the town hall on Thursday night to protest against the new vehicles, known as Eurocabs.
Mac Patel, vice chairman of Blackburn with Darwen Hackney Carriage Association, said: “People spent thousands and thousands of pounds on new taxis two years ago when we were told to buy a different type.
“We simply do not want Eurocabs in Blackburn at all.”
Mr Patel insisted disabled people could fit in the “London-style” cabs that came into use two years ago so there was no need for the new design.
But Charles Oakes, of the North West Hackney Drivers Association, has applied to the council on behalf of five drivers for permission to use the Peugeot E7.
He said: “The council is discriminating against disabled people and it has ignored the High Court decision.
“If a driver sees a niche in the market he should be entitled to exploit it.”
After a long debate, the committee recommended the Peugeots were not granted licenses.
The final decision will be made by Tory executive member Alan Cottam.
Committee chair Sajid Ali said: “We voted to stick with the black cabs.
“It’s what the drivers wanted.”
Labour committee member Jim Smith added: “It was chaos at the meeting.”
A hard-hitting film depicting the rape of a woman is to be screened in Bradford city centre in a bid to cut down on sex attacks.
Sexual assaults on women have been shown to increase significantly during the festive period and West Yorkshire Police has today started Operation North-dale, to encourage female revellers to stay safe.
The operation was run for the first time last year and resulted in a 26 per cent reduction in serious sexual offences in West Yorkshire.
The campaign, which coincides with National Rape Awareness Week and will run throughout the Christ-mas period, tells women about how to stay safe on a night out, including knowing your limits, staying with friends and arranging a licensed taxi ride home.
Police will also be projecting messages, posters and postcards to revellers from mobile display vehicles. They will also broadcast, after 9pm, the film to highlight the potential dangers women face on a night out.
It will be screened in Bradford city centre on Thursday.
Chief Superintendent Barry South, of West Yorkshire Police’s Local Policing department, said: “I urge everyone to avoid making themselves vulnerable through binge drinking.
“I hope that this campaign will make people sit up and take note of these simple measures to keep themselves out of trouble.”
Police will be taking action on people cruising in cars and posing as taxi drivers.
TAXI driver Malik Akber deliberately drove at a customer after an argument with him.
Callum Wilde was hit with such force he was thrown on to the bonnet and then the ground, but was not seriously injured, Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard yesterday.
Prosecutor Phillip Beardwell said Mr Wilde got in to the taxi at 2.30am on April 30 this year after a night out in Newcastle. They agreed a £10 fare for Mr Wilde to be taken to his girlfriend’s house in Stoke.
But Akber did not drive off. Instead another customer got in the cab and asked to be taken to Trentham.
An argument then broke out between Mr Wilde and Akber about the fare and because it appeared the other man was being taken home first.
After stopping the taxi near the Britannia Stadium, Akber called the police, claiming Mr Wilde had a knife.
Mr Beardwell said the argument calmed down when Akber agreed to pay Mr Wilde £2 back and take him to Campbell Road.
“When they got to Campbell Road, Mr Wilde got out and began to walk to his girlfriend’s.
“The defendant then began driving after Mr Wilde. It appeared to the other passenger that Akber was trying to run him (Mr Wilde) over.”
The court heard Mr Wilde started to “almost goad” the driver with his arms aloft in a “come on” gesture.
“This quickly re-ignited the defendant’s temper,” said Mr Beardwell. “The passenger remembers the defendant saying ‘I am going to kill him’.
“In fear of what was going to happen the man got out of the taxi. He saw the taxi drive back to Mr Wilde.”
The court heard Akber deliberately aimed the car at Mr Wilde. The car hit him, he went on the bonnet and fell on the ground.
The other passenger went to assist Mr Wilde, who suffered minor injuries.
The defendant drove off, stopped after a short distance and called the police.
Akber, aged 29, of Pinnox Street, Tunstall, who has no previous convictions, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving on November 3, the day of his trial.
Anis Ali, defending, said Akber, a father-of-two, regretted the incident.
He said there was a significant degree of provocation, but Akber’s reaction was a “concern”.
Mr Ali said Akber is no longer driving, but has gained work in a take-away.
“He has put himself in jeopardy, but he demonstrates a degree of victim empathy, clear remorse and regret.”
Judge Mark Eades said he could not suspend the sentence as it was far too serious a case and jailed Akber for 41 weeks and disqualified him from driving for 12 months.
The judge said: “It is clear to me there was a degree of provocation and I can understand why you became upset.
“But whatever the provocation, at the time your passenger was out of the car and you turned your car around went towards him.
“You were very lucky the injuries he sustained were not really serious.”
BATTLE lines were once again drawn at a Fenland council meeting as the chairman of Wisbech and District Hackney Carriage Drivers Association pleaded for taxis to remain on the Horsefair Bus Station.
But Dave Patrick’s pleas could next week fall on deaf ears because Fenland District Council’s licensing committee is set to pick one of three schemes that will see the current system scrapped.
Weeks of consultation have ended with the council drawing up three options:
• Retain two taxis in the Horsefair, scrap the waiting area and create on-street ranks across the town.
• Create a new rank in East Place next to The Case pub including a drop-off/waiting area in Canal Street.
• Retain two taxis on the Horsefair and create additional ranks in Canal Street and East Place.
The options come despite protests from taxi drivers, Wisbech Town Council, Wisbech Chamber of Commerce and The Case.
Mr Patrick, however, is refusing to give up - and he called for the licensing committee to reject all three options when he spoke at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting in support of a petition he presented at the full council meeting on November 5.
He said: “What is the council going to do with what was our waiting area? It has little potential for any other use except maybe for large buses to reverse with difficulty into the area.
“If two of the proposals allow us to continue to use the ranks, why take away the waiting area? Us waiting there to go over to the rank is a better option than taxis continually circling the roundabout and continually riding on and off the Horsefair in the hope of an empty rank space.
“The Horsefair has operated in its present format for years without any serious incidents at all with relation to the taxis and no member of the public has ever been injured in a taxi-related incident in that area.
“The cost of the scheme to develop the area around The Case is estimated to be around £75,000. Is this money that could be considered well-spent when we are at present in such difficult financial times? With council revenues expecting to drop and savings of £2million being sought is this really a time to fix something that is not really broke?
“Why common sense cannot be allowed to prevail I have absolutely no idea but then maybe this smacks of Big Brother: you do as we say with absolutely no consideration of what the people of Wisbech want.”
Councillors referred the petition to next Tuesday’s licensing committee meeting as part of the consultation.
But Councillor Simon King said: “If we don’t redevelop the site by The Case it is quite possible that at some point in the future we will be forced to move the taxis from the Horsefair. If we don’t have somewhere else we are going to be in a far worse situation.
“We ought to develop that site and ought to allow the drivers and customers to choose where they pick up their taxis.”
He added: “A lot of this has been driven not by Fenland, but by legislation made elsewhere (the European Union) and by the demands of Cambridgeshire County Council.
“It is a very difficult balancing act, but we must in my view develop The Case area because we could easily be left with no taxi spaces at all.”
Councillor Mac Cotterell said: “The licensing committee has an extremely difficult task. Whatever decision it comes to will be wrong.
“I am not sure putting the taxis behind The Case is the right answer. It may cause further problems in the future.
Motorists who leave their cars running on frosty mornings to warm up the engine and clear the windscreen could face being fined under anti-pollution rules this winter.
Drivers are being told that leaving a car idling for more than a couple of minutes wastes fuel, and they could be served with on-the-spot fines of up to £40.
However motoring groups have warned the rules should not be used to stop responsible motorists leaving engines ticking over while they remove ice and condensation from windows.
Many councils now enforce the ’stationary idling offence’, which was quietly introduced by the Government in 2002.
It is particularly aimed at drivers of buses and taxis who sometimes leave engines running for half-an-hour or more while waiting for passengers, pumping out pollution unnecessarily.
One of the latest authorities considering imposing the rules is Sefton council in Merseyside.
It says running engines while a vehicle is not moving is an ‘inefficient use of fuel’ and results in the release of gases that have a ‘negative effect on both climate change and public health’.
Fines will start at £20, doubling if they aren’t paid within three weeks.
David Tattersall, executive member of its environmental committee, insisted officials wouldn’t be fining motorists ‘left, right and centre’.
‘It is more about advising people to switch off their engines to reduce vehicle emissions and prevent air pollution,’ he added.
BORED passengers can now croon, or crow, their way into town thanks to Dublin’s first karaoke taxi.
An entrepreneurial cab driver has created the city’s only karaoke taxi as a means of tempting new customers.
David Dennis, from Walkinstown, refuses to be negative about the fall-off in the taxi industry and says he was forced to think of a new way of getting fares.
“This game is shot, I had to think of something,” he said. “So now I’m just getting on with it.”
“I’m the only karaoke taxi in Dublin,” he added.
David (43) turned his seven-seater cab into a crooning salon with an imported Chinese karaoke machine and had state-of-the-art video screens fitted into his car.
“I have three screens, two in the back and one master touch screen,” he said.
Selection
“I don’t mind having to listen to them singing, that’s just like me driving around on any other night with people singing to the radio,” he laughed.
Passengers are provided with two microphones and can choose from a selection of 300 songs.
“You can have anything from Hot Stuff to Living La Vida Loca to We Are Family,” David said. “I don’t have a lot of rock or rap songs though. This is a pop taxi, not a rap taxi.”
The Karaoke Taxi’s best customers are groups of women heading for a night out.
Customers can either hire the taxi for a block session or use it as a mode of transport in and out of town.
“A one-hour journey will take you on the ‘limo route’, up O’Connell Street, down Capel Street, through one end of Temple Bar and by Powerscourt up to Stephen’s Green,” David explained.
“But you can ring me and order a taxi to take you from Templeogue for example, I won’t charge anything extra.”
The taxi driver said that at the end of the journey he will decide whether passengers have ‘The Cab Factor’.
A one-hour session costs around €70, but other journeys are charged at a standard rate.
And David said that he is considering plans to introduce bingo sessions for tourists in his cab.
David, who is married with two children, said that the business angle has worked for him, particularly when so many taxis are struggling to find work in the downturn.
“It cost over €2,000 to have it all fitted in, but you have to do something, so I’m not going to moan,” he said.
“I’m happy enough with how it is going.”
A judge has ruled in the favour of taxi drivers in Newport, who challenged a council decision to impose age limits on vehicles.
A new rule had said Hackney cabs must be less than 12 years old, and private hire cars less than eight from 2010.
A judge in Cardiff ruled that the council failed to consult properly and set aside its decision.
Newport hosts golf’s Ryder Cup next year and the council was worried about safety, emissions and appearance.
But Newport Hackney Drivers Association had said the move would have put many of its members out of business.
The association claimed 59 of the current 135 Hackney drivers in the city would be put out of business by the rule change.
It says Newport would be the first council in Wales to place an age limit on purpose-built hackney cabs.
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 I can understand why the council is trying to give the city a good image  Lionel Morris, Newport Hackney Drivers Association
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Back in March a demonstration was staged in the city centre over the planned changes.
Before the hearing, association chairman Lionel Morris said they had to fight the decision.
He said it costs about £20,000 to buy a three-year-old cab and, with the recession, many members could not afford that.
Mr Morris said he could not afford to buy a new cab himself.
“But to be honest with you, you don’t put image first in front of 230 hackney drivers’ livelihood.
“If at least 60% of our drivers are going to lose their jobs because of this imposing of age limit, purely because of the Ryder Cup, then that’s not a sensible thing for the council to do.”
The city’s taxis are already subject to a strict regime of testing every six months and can face random inspections as well.
Ageing fleet
The judicial review was heard at the High Court in Cardiff last Friday.
Ruth Stockley for Newport council told the previous hearing that safety was a priority, and it is a reasonable assumption that as a vehicle gets older it will need more maintenance to keep it in a safe condition.
The council is also concerned that its fleet of taxis is ageing and that this could pose problems.
The judge Mr Justice Beatson had decided to reserve his judgement for a week.
The drivers’ association said they were relieved and were happy to talk to the council, but would fight any attempt to introduce the ban.
TAXI drivers in Worcester say they are working in fear of their safety and are demanding for CCTV cameras in their cabs before “someone gets killed”.
Worcester City Council was set to press ahead with the scheme two years ago but there was opposition about making cameras compulsory for all drivers.
A working party was set up to look at the issue but no further proposals have yet been put to the council. A number of taxi drivers raised their concerns at a Policing Matters meeting held at Unity House, Stanley Road.
Chief Inspector Jerry Reakes-Williams, head of local policing in south Worcestershire, faced questions from a number of drivers who said they feel “bullied” and “oppressed”.
The drivers identified two main incidents which have left them feeling unsafe.
In 1996 Worcester taxi driver Shazad Baig was set on fire by a customer after being squirted with petrol. He spent a week in the burns unit at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham.
In September 2006 Mohammed Khan was repeatedly stabbed after taking a customer from St Swithin’s Street, Worcester to Tibberton, near Droitwich.
The father-of-five from St John’s was hospitalised for a week and needed 40 stitches to knife wounds in his hand, chest and lip. Neither case resulted in a successful court prosecution.
Tariq Hussain, of Battenhall, who has been working as a driver in the city for 10 years, said he feels the issue has been “brushed under the carpet”.
He said: “Nothing is being done about it. There was talk about it a while back but we haven’t heard anything for ages “Are you waiting for somebody to die before you do something? Or is it up to us to sort it out ourselves?”
Mr Reakes-Williams, said the decision was up to Worcester City Council.
He added: “I think having CCTV in taxis would be great but as everything it comes at a price, somebody has got to pay for it.
“It is up to the city council and the citizens of Worcester to decide whether or not they are going to pay for it.”
Mohammed Shaban, of East Street, Arboretum, has been driving taxis in Worcester since 1992.
He told the meeting: “The views of taxi drivers are not being considered and we are not happy about it.
“Something has to change. It is not fair that we should have to work in fear of our safety. CCTV in our taxis would act as a deterrant to assaults and will help the police with their investigations.”
Mike Harrison, chairman of the city council’s taxi forum, said the issue “is not on the agenda at the moment”.
Mr Harrison confirmed the council would not have the money to fund any future schemes and equipment would have to be paid for by charging extra for taxi licences.
AN EMBARRASING blunder by the district council has led to confidential information about men applying for taxi licences being published on its website, in a move which the Government says could put them at risk of identity theft.
National insurance numbers, addresses, phone numbers, photographs, driving licence information, criminal convictions and other personal details of five men due to go before a private committee meeting were all splashed on Epping Forest District Council’s official website for two days after a “computer error”.
The Guardian alerted officers to the mistake when we discovered the private details yesterday afternoon (Wednesday), but by this morning the council had still failed to contact the men affected.
The authority has now apologised and pledged to carry out a full investigation.
One of the men, Dean Wiseman, of Loughton, said he was stunned when the Guardian broke the news to him that his private details had been published.
He said: “I didn’t know anything about it at all.
“It’s a bit nasty.”
Mr Wiseman, who is a driver for Essex taxi firm VIP Cars, is already a serving driver but has had to have his licence reviewed by the council after he was fined for speeding earlier this year.
A spokesman for the council said: “We have made a mistake here and obviously we’re apologising to everyone in this case.
“[Our] people did their best to get it taken down from the website as quickly as they could, and we are in the process of talking to the people involved and explaining to them what happened.”
A spokeswoman for the Government’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the details had the potential to put the men at risk of fraud.
She said: “The ICO takes breaches of individuals’ privacy very seriously.
“Any organisation which processes personal information must ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to keep that information secure.
“This is an important principle of the Data Protection Act. Failure to protect personal details adequately, such as national insurance numbers, could lead to information falling into the wrong hands.
“Individuals who feel their personal information has not been handled in compliance with the Data Protection Act can contact the ICO for advice and guidance.”
Epping Forest District Council is expected to comment further later.
The meeting to decide whether the men should be approved licenses is to be held next Thursday (December 3), in a meeting the public and press will be banned from because of the confidential information involved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8376000/8376784.stm
BBC London has found evidence of a turf war between the drivers of black taxis, and minicab operators.
The black cabbies claim there’s a growing problem of illegal touting by minicabs, which should only pick up pre booked passengers.
But minicabs say they’re operating legally - and some are victims of racism.
BBC London reporter Gareth Furby has spent time talking to black cab drivers and mini-cab drivers in West London to find out the extent of the problem.
Cabbie demonstration
Cabbie Steve says:”This touting problem is really becoming epidemic proportions now. It is an absolute nightmare at the moment.”
Steve invited BBC London invited us into his cab to hear his opinions on the problem.
Steve says: “These people will hem you in and smash the cab up and you.”
Steve drove us to a nightclub in Chelsea and then confronted a man claiming he was illegally touting for passengers.
Steve says to the man: “You are not allowed to tout people in the street unless it’s gone through a company. You are an illegal tout.”
The man insisted he had been pre-booked and objected not only to Steve, but also to BBC London’s camera.
Steve says: “It’s no good taking them to court and giving them a silly £20 fine. They’ve got to take the vehicles then and then destroy them, that will stop them.”
And London cabbies are starting to take their own action in Mayfair queuing up and in effect occupying one taxi rank for several hours.
‘Disgraceful’
One cabbie says:”All the minicab drivers are using this rank illegally and they’re stopping us from getting on here.”
Another says:”It’s about time something proactive happened to keep the touts off the street.”
Another cabbie holds up his badge and says:”See that? It took me three years to get I ain’t gonna give it up for no one.”
But once the cabbies demo was over the minicabs were back and they have different stories to tell.
Ali Mexamed says he only picks up pre-booked passengers and claims he’s been racially abused in the past by some black cab drivers.
He says:”The words that come from these black cabs is unbelievable, you are black, you are black, where is your passport, how long have you been here, you are illegal.”
Restaurant doorman Ihab Abou says he’s been unfairly pilloried in a taxi trade newspaper (he holds up the paper which says “Nobu Plonker” next to his picture) when his company has a licence to legally pre-book minicabs.
He says:”I just think it’s disgusting. It’s disgraceful.”
Another nightclub doorman, says;”They keep coming out, swearing at us, calling us foreigners. I think it’s completely wrong to put the private hire minicab and the black cab at the same place.”
Transport for London says:” People deserve the freedom of choice if they want to hire a minicab they can do that from those venues, if they want to get into a traditional black London taxi and hail a taxi they can do that.”
TfL says minicabs which operate illegally are being caught and prosecuted, but many black cabbies believe not nearly enough is being done, and this dispute could yet escalate.
