Gold plated cab licences

Gold plated cab licences
By Chris Buratta

City cab driver Mohammed Razaq and colleagues are worried about deregulation


Lucrative black cab licences are so scarce in Oxford they are changing hands for up to £70,000 a plate.

But cabbies fear a city council plan to abolish the limit on taxi numbers would leave them bankrupt. Meanwhile, drivers in the north of the county are mulling over the prospect of strike action about similar council-led plans to alter the number of licences.

Oxford has just 107 Hackney Carriage 'plates' - with a rare lottery held every four years, when a small number of plates go up for grabs. For many cabbies the licence plate is their pension or nest egg, which they plan to cash in when they hang up their keys.

But an Oxford City Council task force is thinking about lifting the cap on the number of licences - a move that would make the current plates worthless. Alan Woodward, secretary of the City of Oxford Licensed Taxis Association, said cabbies were fearful about the possible change.

He said the drop in plate value and a lack of customers would lead to financial ruin if the market became a free for all.

He said: "At the moment there are lots of drivers earning less than the minimum wage, as it does not apply to self-employed people. Lots of blokes are working 10 or 12-hour shifts, earning £40, because business isn't there. It's there on Friday and Saturday night, but you don't make a living on two shifts."


Mr Woodward estimated the going rate for an Oxford plate at £50,000 - but added he would not pay that price.

However he said drivers also faced spiralling insurance and fuel costs, and so relied on the sell-on value of the plate as a return on their investment.

He said: "Drivers can see everything they have worked for going down the pan," he said.

At Oxford Railway Station, cabbies were equally worried by the prospect of de-restriction the number of Hackney Carriages.

One driver, who asked to remain anonymous, admitted paying £70,000 for his plate. He said: "I would hope to get that sum back, but if it's derestricted, I won't. The main issue is there's not enough fares to go around."

Cabbie Philip Willett said: "Sometimes you are down here for an hour and 25 minutes waiting for a job. More taxis means less work and we struggle to make enough to live on at the moment."

City councillor Sid Phelps, who is heading the group investigating derestriction, said the group had been told £50,000 was the rate for an Oxford plate.

Mr Phelps added: "I am not happy they are changing hands for so much money. It is a bit like, if you're in the club, great; if not, then it is really difficult to get in."

A report drawn up by the group said de-restriction would increase taxi numbers benefiting passengers and reducing waiting times.

One driver, who asked to remain anonymous, admitted paying £70,000 for his plate. He said: "I would hope to get that sum back, but if it's derestricted, I won't. The main issue is there's not enough fares to go around."
Hmmm, so why exactly did you pay seventy grand then, more money them sense methinks. :lol.
When you are sitting on a seventy grand nest egg, it's easy to get a little greedy I guess like the Station cabbies in Sheffield against the rest of sheffield taxis, to protect their own and yet to listen to bullshit they come out with about unity is sickening.
STTA in practice stands for Station taxi trade association, with rest of you fools forced to join just to make up the numbers.

Strong words indeed. We are not all fools and I resent you saying that. The station management have already made a ballsup of the whole place with traffic queuing to get in and out of the place. May I suggest changing our approach to the trade rather than constantly looking back at how things were.
We don't need to depend only on the Station but the wider city potential to challenge the PH market and get our trade back off them. We can let the station's sleepy and lazy drivers hide away in a hole there and make our job work for us outside. We can do it and I assure you with a little organising we will do it, just that we need to be pushed into a corner a little more

Taxi drivers keep up night strike

Taxi drivers in north Oxfordshire are to hold a vote later on whether to continue with strike action.

Cherwell Valley Hackney Carriage Association members were off the streets again on Saturday night.

They are protesting at council plans to scrap limits on the number of applicants for hackney licences.

They say more drivers would mean they would have to work much longer hours to earn enough. The council said it would work with police to get people home.

The taxi drivers also took action last weekend against the decision.

Cherwell District Council's decision to lift a limit previously in place on the number of Hackney Carriage licences issued was made in line with government advice.