Licensing the Private Hire Trade: Community Car Schemes Won’t Suffer

New legislation will not mean organised community car schemes have to pay to be licensed, a meeting next week [20 February] will hear, when representatives of community transport groups and private hire companies gather to discuss the impact of licensing on their industry.

Community car schemes are exempt from the private hire licensing requirements, introduced at the start of this year, which are meant to maintain standards of service and give passengers confidence that they are being properly protected on their journeys. Voluntary organisations have expressed concerns about the impact the changes in the law — and licensing fees — could have on the way community car schemes and their drivers operate. NNDC is the licensing authority in North Norfolk.

A meeting for community transport groups at NNDC’s Cromer office on Wednesday, 20 February is intended to help the Council and community transport providers understand the issues facing the rich pattern of taxis, private hire and community car schemes that has grown up throughout the District.

Chris Cawley, Environmental Health Manager at NNDC, said: “The new legislation is very clear that community car schemes are exempt from the recent changes in legislation that require private hire vehicles, and others, to introduce a new layer of safeguards to protect the travelling public.”

Mr Cawley explained: “As a licensing authority we need to find a way that will enable us, and more importantly the passengers, to see quickly and easily whether the driver of the car that has come to collect them is either properly licensed or properly exempt.

“Across the country, councils and transport partnerships are looking at how to introduce safeguards to reassure and protect the travelling public, without creating so much red tape that it becomes impossible for small transport schemes to continue. We feel we have the potential here in North Norfolk, to develop a model scheme as an example for the rest of the country. We have no intention of making demands on community car schemes that they could not possibly meet.”

Anyone who has not been invited to the meeting, at 10am at NNDC’s Holt Road office in Cromer on Wednesday, 20 February, but who works in the private hire or community transport sector and would like to take part, should contact Tony Gent on 01263 516268 to book a place.

ENDS