Agenda item

The Director of Neighbourhoods and Environmental Services submits a report.

The Director of Neighbourhoods and Environmental Services submitted a report that required Members to determine a driver’s continued entitlement to retain a Hackney Carriage and Private Hire vehicles driver’s licence.

The driver was not present. The Licensing Team Manager, Licensing Enforcement Officer and Legal Adviser to the Sub-Committee were present.

It was noted that all relevant documents had been sent to the driver who had provided written representations. The driver had been spoken to on the telephone by the Licensing Enforcement Officer and visited at home by the Officer the previous day. The Licensing Team Manager telephoned the driver at the start of the meeting, but there was no response. Members agreed that the meeting should proceed in the driver’s absence.

The Licensing Team Manager presented the report to the Committee and outlined details of the application including the relevant City Council Policy Guidelines. Questions from the Sub-Committee were answered.

The Sub-Committee received legal advice from the Legal Adviser to the Sub-Committee in the presence of all those present.

In reaching their decision, Members felt they should deliberate in private on the basis that this was in the public interest, and as such outweighed the public interest of their deliberation taking place with the parties represented present.

The Chair announced that the decision and the reasons made during private deliberation would be publicly announced within five working days. The Chair informed the meeting that the Legal Adviser to the Sub-Committee would be

called back to give advice on the wording of the decision.

The Chair then asked all but Members of the Sub-Committee and Democratic Support Officers to disconnect from the meeting. The Sub-Committee then deliberated in private in order to consider their decision.

The Sub-Committee recalled the Legal Adviser to the Sub-Committee to give

advice on the wording of the decision.

RESOLVED:

That the Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicle Driver’s Licence be REVOKED.

Members of the Sub-Committee had carefully considered the Committee report placed before them. Members had also taken into account where appropriate the Department for Transport’s “Statutory Taxi & Private Hire Vehicle Standards”, the Regulators’ Code and the Council’s “Guidelines on relevance of convictions of Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicle Drivers”. Members had taken account of the oral and written representations.

The driver had held a Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicle Driver’s Licence since 3 April 2014.

On 27 February 2019 the driver was convicted at Leicester Magistrates’ Court of offences on 8 and 23 July 2018. The offences related to the supply of tobacco in packets which did not detail the required health warnings, possession of goods for sale with a false trademark and supplying a dangerous product. The convictions fell within the category of ‘Other Offences’ under the Council’s Guidelines on Relevance of Convictions which in the absence of exceptional circumstances, provided for a period free from conviction for such offending which was ‘dependent on circumstances’.

The driver did not immediately notify the Licensing Section of the convictions as he was required to do in accordance with his Licence.

The driver did not declare the convictions when he applied to renew his Licence on 24 September 2019. In that renewal application, he incorrectly indicated that he had not been convicted of any offences since he had last been issued with his licence. He then signed a declaration as to the correctness of the information he had provided.

The driver did not declare the convictions in his latest renewal application made on 28 August 2020, although members noted that technically, he did not provide incorrect information in that application when he indicated that he had not been convicted of any offence since he had last been issued with his Licence.

Following that renewal application, the driver’s licence had been renewed. The Council had become aware of the driver’s convictions for the first time when the Licensing Section received his three-yearly enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check on 19 October 2020 which was required as part of the licence renewal process.

Members had not been advised of any history of customer complaint against the driver.

Members did not find any exceptional circumstances whereby the Council’s Guidelines on Relevance of Convictions should not be followed.

Members took a serious view of the driver’s offending and his subsequent actions, both of which brought into question his integrity. Members were mindful that the protection of the public was their overriding consideration. When a driver failed to provide the Council with required information, and failed to provide information which was truthful, the driver hindered the Council’s ability to exercise its regulatory functions.   

Members found the driver’s criminal offending and his continued failure to notify the Council of his convictions together with the provision of incorrect information in his 2019 renewal application and the signing of an incorrect declaration of correctness in that application constituted ‘any other reasonable cause’ under section 61(1)(b) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 and that it was appropriate to revoke the driver’s Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicle Driver’s Licence.

The driver would be informed he had 21 days to appeal the decision to the Magistrate’s Court should he wish to do so.