Issues relating to the licensing of taxis and private hire vehicles

Written evidence from Merseyside Police (TPH 67)

Following further correspondence between Disclosure Analyst Dave May and Mr Mark Egan from the Transport Committee, in order to obtain the information you have requested we have made searches of police records covering the years 2007 – 2010.

I am able to inform you that there are records of 12 instances of plying a taxi for hire without a licence in the specified time period, all of which were dealt with by way of summons. Researching the conviction status has been difficult because the offence is non-recordable and as such would not be on the Police National Computer (PNC) unless attached to other recordable offences. There are two cases where it was not possible to determine whether or not the person was convicted, as there was no indication on PNC or on other crime recording systems used by the force.

A further search was conducted for all offender records in 2007 – 2010 where the offender’s occupation is listed as Taxi Driver. A total of 374 records were found. Of this number, it appears from the crime notes that an offence was committed against an actual passenger of the taxi driver in 21 instances. There are many more records where the offence was committed whilst the taxi driver was on duty, and also many where this is unclear from the crime notes and would require detailed research on crime recording systems to ascertain the details. To determine which drivers were convicted would again require checking each individual case on another system, like PNC.

It is worthy of note that the information supplied only forms a percentage of the enforcement statistics as the majority of enforcement is undertaken by Council Enforcement Officers. They may be able to assist you further in this regard.

I hope this information is helpful in answering your query.

March 2011