The Licensing Panel of Dumfries and Galloway Council met on Friday 14 October, and recommended that the Council’s Policy and Resources Committee withdraws the current policy on taxi plate transfers, as well as recommending a thorough review of taxi plate numbers.
Elected Members debated the item for well over an hour and were unanimous in their opinion that the current procedures that were in place that allow for plates to be transferred between operators. The current process means that those operators on a waiting list could well remain there for a number of years, due to plates being transferred between operators.
The Council’s Policy and Resources Committee will now receive a report with the Licensing Panel’s recommendations contained within it. Part of these recommendations will be for a full and frank survey to be carried out, to detail if there are enough taxi’s on our roads and in our ranks. Changes to legislation are due to come into force next year that may have a say in how many taxi plates and private hire plates we can issue at any given time, so any review will need to take account of these changes.
Members of the Panel were also in favour of some petitioning of the Scottish Government being carried out with a view to changing legislation that would allow for a level of flexibility to be applied during peak times where demands are higher for taxi’s.
Councillor David McKie, who chaired Friday’s meeting, said;
“There was good discussion today around the table. There are clearly ambiguities in the current policy, which is why we’ve recommended that P&R Committee undertake a full review. We need to ensure that we’re being fair to everyone in relation to taxi provision, whether that’s the business owners, the operators and the general public. I look forward to seeing the report to be tabled at P&R Committee.”
