As a councillor in Cornwall, you campaigned to earn your seat at the table, a table with a set number of seats, a number which is determined by the political needs of the county of Cornwall. Imagine today, you head into Truro for a Council meeting, and when you arrive at County Hall there is absolutely nowhere to park, in fact the cars are flowing out of the entrance and down the street, offering little hope of you taking part in the meeting, but in the end you manage to park down the road and hike it into the meeting.
When you arrive at the meeting, you are unable to get into the room as there is a massive queue of people bursting out of the chambers; how are you going to take part in discussions when you cannot even get to your seat?
Why has this happened? – Government decided to do away with the set number of councillors and the need to campaign and be elected, and said that as long as you meet the basic criteria as a person, anyone can be a councillor, with no limit as to how many. So now you can take part in democratic discussions ‘IF’ you can get into the room to take a seat!
I am sure you know where I am going with this, because that is exactly what removing the numerical limit in Restormel Zone will do to us, only in our cases it won’t be whether we can take part in discussions, it will be whether we can feed our families or not, and pay the mortgage or not!
The Hackney Carriage (Taxi) industry is a very different beast from that of the Private Hire industry. As a Taxi ply’s for hire from a rank, it needs a rank space (seat at the table) to ply for hire from. In Newquay there are 18 daytime rank spaces available for all 63 Taxis that operate in Newquay to work from. At night there are 26 rank spaces, however, 10 of those are redundant as all the work is from the town centre, which is home to just 12 rank spaces for those 63 Taxis to operate from (with 4 on the other side of town which are hit & miss).
The available work load (demand) being what it is, and as highlighted in the results of the Unmet Demand Survey, means that although there are far more Taxis than rank spaces, as there is no unmet demand, we are generally able to work with this and make a living, but if the number of Hackney Carriages were to increase exponentially, then this manageable system would crumble into chaos, putting unsustainable pressures upon those currently working in the business, as we would then also be queuing a long way down the corridor waiting for a seat at the table.
The Task and Finish Group recently published a report to Government in which recommendation 8 stated that local authorities should be able “to set a cap on the number of Taxi and PHVs they license. This can help authorities to solve challenges around congestion, air quality and parking and ensure appropriate provision of taxi and private hire services for passengers, while maintaining drivers’ working conditions”.
It has nothing to do with ‘quangos, cartels or closed shops’, there isn’t a local ‘Taxi Mafia’ that I am aware of. It is just made up of hard working people doing an important job against the odds like any other, and when an operator decides to sell his/her Taxi, they sell the new owner an up and running, ready to go business that they have worked hard to build, just like any other business.
In the wake of the Pandemic, and all the cuts through austerity to public services and even more so vital public transport in Cornwall that came before it, the Taxi industry plays a very fundamental role in this, so it is important to protect the current balance, especially when it is continually highlighted that there is ‘no unmet demand‘. The numerical limit exists to protect this very balance, the balance of supply to demand which ensures that each operator is able to run a viable service which can be operated at the required standards that the public expect and need.
Cornwall is made up of 6 very different economic areas and their differences are very clear. As a result the Taxi industry has evolved around this very differently in each area (Zone), and in each area we serve the public very effectively because of a well balanced system which maintains reasonable working conditions for operators and drivers alike, and with regular 3 yearly unmet demand surveys we can ensure that when any unmet demand is identified, numbers can be increased accordingly to maintain this balance. An already harmonised system with the appropriate checks and balances in place – simple and effective, whilst ensuring suitable minimum working conditions for all.
The numerical limits, combined with the 6 Zones, ensures that there is a guaranteed supply of sustainable taxi services to the public in each area.
Task and Finish Group’s full report here
Why we need the 6 Taxi Zones here