Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Taxi drivers’ licence fees likely to go up
Wednesday 18th January 2012, 10:59AM GMT.
Taxi drivers will have to pay more to stay on the roads next year, a meeting heard.
Low fees and a rise in the number of applications from outside the county contributed to Shropshire Council’s licensing department making a loss of £60,000 during 2010/11. The situation was discussed by members of the council’s strategic licensing committee at Shirehall.
And instead of making drivers pay towards recovering that money by doubling current fees, councillors yesterday favoured lower rises of just under 10 per cent to get the money back over a longer period of time.
This would see the cost of a first-year driver’s badge going up by £10 to just over £150.
And a three-year badge would cost £120 instead of £110.
Would-be taxi drivers who fail the council’s knowledge test will have to pay £62 for a resit.
At present there is no charge and drivers have been resitting it several times.
They will now go out for a month’s consultation before going back to the council for a final decision.
Council officers had reviewed the fees to make sure the charges better reflected the amount of work and money they cost the council to administer.
Richard Price, chairman of the Shrewsbury Drivers’ Action Group, told councillors drivers were not responsible for the loss.
“We did not create this situation and therefore would not expect to be forced to suffer by the recovery of this deficit in the short term.
“Trade in our area is suffering very seriously from the economic downturn and the massive influx of drivers from out of the area.”
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It’s time the council clamped down on these taxis
If they don’t-know their way round who pays for it the passenger. If you sit an exam enough times the law of averages says you will pass, so they should pay for a failure, and the rises in fees are probably in line with inflation over the years of no increases.
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