Agenda and minutes

No declarations of interest were made by Members.

To consider the report of the Assistant Director Environment.

The Assistant Director Environment presented the report on the findings of the consultation conducted in respect of the Council’s policy of restriction in respect of hackney carriages.

At the Licensing Committee on 22 July 2014, the Committee had considered the options of retaining the policy of restriction and commissioning a survey into unmet demand or entering into consultation with the public, trade and other stakeholders to consider whether to remove the policy of taxi restriction in a managed way, and enhance the quality controls for taxis to improve standards further and prevent any potential negative impact from de-restriction. The Committee resolved the latter option.

Following the above decision, the Council commissioned Marketing Means to undertake research as part of its Taxi Licensing Consultation at the end of 2014. The work of Marketing Means included:-

·                a telephone survey of a random sample of 500 members of the general public in Exeter;

·                three focus groups in Exeter with invited groups of Hackney carriage drivers, private hire drivers, and older people/representatives of groups for people with disabilities;

·                an online survey accessible to all; and

·                in addition, representations had been invited and received from individuals and organisations.

The online survey closely followed the questions in the telephone survey although, in the former, there was additional visual material for the question on a city-wide livery. The phone survey gathered the views from a random selection of people that was matched to the demographic profile of Exeter’s population.

Full copies of the representations and responses were made available to the Licensing Committee and published.

The results from the consultation exercise were set out in the report and key points summarised. The Assistant Director Environment stated that the responses from the consultation did not highlight any issues that would significantly strike against ending the policy of restriction, especially if introduced at the same time as the imposition of higher quality standards. The results indicated that higher quality standards were broadly supported.

The Assistant Director Environment stated that the results indicated that there was a demand for Hackney Carriages that was not being met and that the policy of restriction had negative consequences that were not in the public interest. He suggested that there may be weaknesses in the way past surveys had been carried out, which could call into question whether the “demand” surveys could be robustly relied on.

In addition, the Assistant Director Environment stated that the following options had also been considered and discounted:-

·                adopting a policy of managed growth in taxi numbers, incrementally increasing numbers year by year, but requiring an affirming survey to be commissioned. It was the view of the Assistant Director Environment that this would not by itself, achieve an increase in quality of the taxi fleet. It would also be open to legal challenge from those who were outside of the batch allowed through each year. Consequently, this was not considered a preferred option.

·                maintaining the policy of restriction and coupling it with enhanced quality standards.  The Assistant  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.