To answer your question about capping Private Hire Vehicles and your belief that this cannot be done, well in relation to a Section 48 Private Hire Vehicle Licence the Council cannot refuse to test a vehicle, but there is a way to cap the vehicles operating under a Section 55 Operator Licence.
I will explain clearly for all the hard to understand Licensing Officers out there as it is very simple, when an Application for the Section 55 Operator Licence Propeitor is submitted there is a system in place that asks the question how many vehicles to you intend to operate from the Operational Trading Address and this information should be passed to the Highways Department for assessment of the Traffic Problems any Taxi or Private Hire Operation would cause that could affect the neigbourhood area with PARKING of the vehicles being a major part of the assessment and a report being submitted to the Planning Department for their Planning Officer along with the Highways Officer visiting the Proposed Address and assessing the PARKING SPACES AVAILABLE and this then restricts the number of Private Hire Vehicles that can OPERATE from the Address should the Application for a Section 55 Operator Licence be approved.
These Guideline Rules are the same as the Guideline Rules the North East of England Traffic Commisioner uses to regulate the LGV Industry and the PSV Industry and you only have to look at the large depots those Operations must have to be able to park all the vehicles they operate, but unfortunately we have useless Licensing, Highways and Planning Officers employed by Local Councils who fail in their duty to Enforce these conditions that would regulate the size of Private Hire Operations in our Area.
There is however no regulation that can cap the number of Private Hire Drivers Licensed and 2 or 3 drivers per vehicle would probably be the response if the number of Private Hire Vehicles were capped in line with Parking Conditions meaning of course the Driver would of course be an EMPLOYEE and not a Sub-Contractor resulting in the National Minimum Wage of £5.73p at present being applied plus Employer NI Contributions that would result in higher fares to the passenger as the fare charged would have to reflect the true Operational Costs incurred by the Private Hire Industry as the Owners would not want to take a drop in their revenue Profits.
I do not believe myself this will ever be Enforced I have to say!!!
Contributed By: The Lighthousekeeper
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Funny how nobody bothered to respond to this article when I posted the Conditions that needed to be complied with under the Governments “Town and Country Planning Legislation” that Councils must follow in relation to Transport!
New North Tyneside Policy states Planning Consent under 4.5
4.5.1 states
Applicants are advised to confirm with the relavent planning authority that they have the correct planning consent for the premises.
Any Planning Consent that has been granted already will be available under FOI requests and will confirm how many off-street parking spaces exist at each Operator Licence Propeirtors Base/Office in the same way that the PSV & LGV Operators have to comply with planning regulations for their trading base site, as it is illegal for commercially licensed (365 days a year 24 hours a day once they have been tested & Licensed is what the Motor Car or MPV becomes, instead of it being a private motor vehicle anymore) private hire vehicles MUST NOT PARK on the public highway, in the publics eyesight together and create a rank anywhere on the public highway, whilst awaiting another hiring, the trading address for this reason must have parking conditions attached to any planning application for a transport business for the use of the premises applied for under the application that was being requested at the time!!!!
Again I suspect this will never be Enforced, I must say!!!!