Hackney Legislation - Out of Touch Once Again
Introduction
When is an application for a hackney licence not an application?
The short answer is, following a High Court Judgment on 8 November 2007, when the applicant is not the "proprietor" of the hackney carriage at the time the application is made.
Plymouth taxi firm Taxifast made a request to Plymouth City Council in May 2003 for the grant of 30 hackney plates. Plymouth City Council maintains a cap on hackney plate numbers and had, at the time of the application, allocated all plates within the cap. Not unnaturally Taxifast, which proceeded to challenge the legality of the cap, decided that it was not worth spending the £900,000.00 or so, which would have been required to purchase the vehicles it wished to licence, in advance of the outcome of its challenge.
After an 11 day hearing in Plymouth Crown Court in 2006, Taxifast was successful in challenging the City Council's cap by proving that the consultants' report into unmet demand commissioned by the Council was fundamentally flawed. The Crown Court decided, however, to treat Taxifast's application as an application for one plate only, rather than 30, and directed that one plate only should be issued.
In November this year the case came before the Administrative Division of the High Court by way of an appeal. In his Judgment, Mr Justice Mitting decided that the Courts were bound to follow a literal interpretation of the 160 year old Act governing the procedure for making applications, The Town Police Clauses Act 1847. Section 41 of the 1847 Act requires that any application for a licence should be made by "the proprietor or one of the proprietors of the hackney carriage in respect of which such licence is applied for." Further, the section makes it an offence if the proprietor of the vehicle for which application is made is not stated or is incorrectly stated in the application. Consequently, any applicant for a hackney carriage licence is required by the Act to be the proprietor of part proprietor of the particular vehicle at the time the application is made and the particular vehicle must be identified. The applicant cannot adopt what would obviously be a prudent "wait and see" policy, particularly in an area operating a cap on numbers, of not making the financial commitment to become "proprietor" of the vehicle until the licensing authority indicates a decision in principle to grant the licence.
Acknowledging the "unfortunate economic consequences" for taxi operators arising from his Judgment, Mr Justice Mitting stated that his decision "means a proprietor may incur very substantial expenditure in circumstances where he does not know the licences will be granted." He added, "this is an unfortunate consequence of the Act and for Parliament, not the Courts, to address."
In the absence of any successful challenge of this decision of the High Court in the Court of Appeal, it is clear that a change in legislation by Parliament is now urgently required to keep the law in step with the economic requirements of the industry.
Ashfords is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The information in this article is intended to be general information about English law only and not comprehensive. It is not to be relied on as legal advice nor as an alternative to taking professional advice relating to specific circumstances.
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