Agenda and minutes

Venue: Virtual meeting via Microsoft Teams.

Link: Click here to view audio visual recording of the meeting

Items
No. Item

1.

Declarations of Interest, if any.

Minutes:

No declarations were reported at the meeting.

2.

Minutes of the Licensing Committee Meeting held on 17th September 2020 pdf icon PDF 61 KB

Minutes:

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 17th September, 2020 be approved as a true record.

3.

Hackney Carriage & Private Hire Licensing Policy. pdf icon PDF 234 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee considered the proposed revisions to the Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Licensing Policy and were asked to determine if the revised policy is to be implemented.

 

A copy of the following documents also formed part of the report:-

 

·         Department of Transport Statutory Taxi & Private Hire Vehicles Standards document (Appendix A)

·         The questions, responses and unedited comments from the on-line survey conducted by the Licensing Department (Appendix B)

·         The revised Policy in light of the responses from the survey (Appendix C)

·         A summary of the changes to the existing Policy (Appendix D)

·         The questions, responses and all unedited comments received during the consultation (Appendix E).

 

Since the publication of the agenda papers, an amended copy of the Policy (Appendix C) was circulated to all members of the Committee, the amendments were detailed as follows:-

 

Appendix 18 ‘Taxi Licensing Committee Hearing’ & Appendix 19 ‘Delegations’ (and all other references to the same contained throughout the policy document) have been revised to remove reference to ‘Taxi Licensing Board Hearings’ and replaced with ‘Taxi Licensing Committee Hearings’ to reflect the following change:

 

That all decisions will be delegated to the members of the licensing committee for determination where a new applicant and/or existing licence holder does not meet the minimum standards of the policy with the exception of:

 

·      in the event of a serious offence being committed by an existing licence holder, which unless immediate action is taken could result in a risk to the public, the immediate revocation of a licence is delegated to the Head of Service, Licensing Manager or Licensing Officer.

 

The amended process means that elected members of the licensing committee will have sole responsibility in determining refusals and revocations and dealing with any subsequent appeals, in cases where the applicant/license holder does not meet the minimum standards of the policy, except when an immediate decision is required to prevent harm to the public.

 

·         Persistent Criminality

One additional change has been made on page 41 of the attached document. The previously circulated version of the policy referred to ‘Applicants with 3 or more convictions’ this has been strengthened to ‘Applicants with more than 1 conviction’. This change has been identified to ensure that applicants with 2 or more convictions are required to evidence a longer period free of conviction than those who have been convicted of a single offence.

 

Following the introduction of the report, debate took place on the proposed revisions to the policy and members expressed their views, acknowledged and took into consideration all the comments made in relation to the public consultation exercise on the draft policy.

 

RESOLVED that the revised Hackney Carriage & Private Hire Licensing Policy be adopted to take affect from 1st April, 2021, including  the amended Taxi Licensing Board Hearing Policy (Appendix 18 of the Policy) and Delegation (Appendix 19 of the Policy) circulated prior to the meeting, with the exception that further consideration be undertaken in respect of the proposed Policy amendments regarding the installation of the mandatory requirement for all  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.