Letter From Lee Ward : Pressure Must Be Put On All Local Authorities Who Have Licensed Uber, To Prove Uber Operate Legally

 

Equality:

The state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities.

That’s the Utopian belief of many of us in this trade, or it used to be.

It used to be the reason why many drivers or even companies did not join an Organisation, Union or Association because they believed that everyone was treat fairly and equally so they didn’t need any support.

But times have changed, bank balances are changed and the Authorities carefully choose who to take action against and who not.

Example 1

2010, Sevenoaks

Evidence against Knole Taxis

Operating a licensed taxi and private hire company from an address without planning permission.

Result:

​License suspended

 

Example 2

2017, London

Evidence against Sean Stockings

​Videoed Leon Daniels in a restaurant and posted on social media.

Result:

​License suspended

Example 3

2017, Nationwide

Evidence against Uber

1,​Admitted under oath that the driver accepts the booking, this is a breach of Section 56 (1) of the LG(MP)A 1976 that states;

For the purposes of this Part of this Act every contract for the hire of a private hire vehicle licensed under this Part of this Act shall be deemed to be made with the operator who accepted the booking for that vehicle whether or not he himself provided the vehicle.

 

2,​assisting drivers to accept work when out of its licensing area

 

3,​Assisting drivers to not take the shortest route possible as defined in Section 69 (1) of the LG(MP)A 1976 that states;

No person being the driver of a hackney carriage or of a private hire vehicle licensed by a district council shall without reasonable cause unnecessarily prolong, in distance or in time, the journey for which the hackney carriage or private vehicle has been hired.

Where its drivers App does not take the shortest possible route as shown below.

    

4

Denying the customer from its basic contractual agreement when booking a journey. In the Uber Terms & Conditions it states;

You acknowledge and agree that the provision to you of transportation services by the Transportation Provider is pursuant to the Transportation Contract and that Uber UK accepts your booking as agent for the Transportation Provider, but is not a party to that contract.

This would be deemed a breach of Section 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015

 

Now, points 2 and 3 break the driver’s conditions to which we must all adhere to and I am sure that the Uber faithful are saying that these are nothing to do with Uber but the driver… well, they are wrong.

Point 2 Uber could stop by placing a geo-net on each driver so that they can only accept work in the area that they are licensed, all other data dispatch systems do this and we know Ubers can because they didn’t allow drivers from other area’s to work in Birmingham for some time. The App simply told the driver that he could not work there when he logged on (or words to that effect).

Point 3 Uber give this to the driver to follow the sat nav because most of the time they don’t know where they are going and should a customer disagree with the route taken then Uber use this route to decide if the driver went the wrong way or not, so yes, Uber are guilty of this one.

Now, you guys that love Uber so much and jump to their defence so quickly… I will never figure that bit out…. You are forgetting, or not actually knowing another section of the LG(MP)A 1976 which states…oh wait, sorry, you will be Uber drivers and will know nothing of the actual Acts that control your industry, my bad. 

LG(MP)A 1976 means the Local Government (Miscellaneous) Provisions Act 1976 and Section 72 (1) states;

Where an offence by any person under this Part of this Act is due to the act or default of another person, then, whether proceedings are taken against the first-mentioned person or not, that other person may be charged with and convicted of that offence, and shall be liable on conviction to the same punishment as might have been imposed on the first-mentioned person if he had been convicted of the offence.

So yes, Uber are guilty also of these two offences.

Now, why would Examples 1 & 2 have their respective licenses suspended (and therefore able to appeal through the courts) but Uber’s has not?

The rules and regulations are for all, are they not?

Surely, in this day and age, someone or somebody will not get away with breaching the rules and regulations simply because an authority is scared to death of being challenged in court….that cannot be it, can it?

I wonder, how many drivers out there still read all this and are still a frog in a boiling pond?

How many sit back and wait for someone else to fight it, or indeed how many have given up that fight because they are tired of fighting?

The fact is that each and every one of you are license holders, you pay for the authority that licenses you to protect your livelihood by keeping out the ones who are not playing by the rules. You inform the licensing of Facebook Taxis, you inform the licensing of PHV’s sat on a Taxi Rank, you inform licensing of PHV’s plying for hire, you inform licensing of Taxis overcharging the public or refusing wheelchair work.

You inform and demand authorities to deal with cases such as example 1 & 2, but you bury your heads in the sand against example 3 and pretend example 1 & 2 are the ones that are killing your trade….

I bet you are the same person who gets a difficult customer and backs down to them then spends the rest of the day dreaming of how you kicked them from kerb to kerb like He-Man.

The proof is there, just like in other countries that kicked them out, and it’s our duty to kick them out also.

Technology we cannot stop, but technology that does not work within the intention of the law we can. 

The same as you stop people who also do not work within the intention of the law.

Someone in authority somewhere is going to have to write a cheque and it may be a big one, but they don’t think twice about writing a cheque when it comes to challenging the small man out there.

That’s bullying and has to stop.

It’s every licensed driver and operator’s duty to put pressure on their local authority that have licensed Uber to prove to them that Uber operates legally and does not breach any of the examples that I have given in this post.

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