‘Excessive’ six month DVLA checks rejected
Taxi and private hire vehicle drivers in Walsall will not have to ‘suffer’ doing six-monthly DVLA checks after a potential policy change was rejected.
Members of Walsall Council’s licensing committee said changing the frequency of checks from the current every three years to six months would be ‘excessive’.
A report to Wednesday’s meeting said a ‘handful’ of the current 1,368 licensed drivers had failed to inform the licensing authority of points endorsed on their licences.
This prompted the taxi licensing sub committee to request a report go to the main Licensing Committee to consider six-monthly DVLA checks.
But councillors said this policy change would result in an extra burden and costs on drivers as well as putting more work on already busy officers when there were very few issues with the current system.
Councillor Aftab Nawaz said: “I’m totally against this. I don’t understand why if we found one or two cases where one or two individuals have done something wrong, the whole trade has to suffer doing six-monthly checks.
“One bad apple doesn’t dictate which kind of policy we have. They don’t do it in any other part of the country. I don’t understand why Walsall has to become an outlier and put on more costs on to our struggling drivers.
“If officers said the three yearly checks are not working and we’ve got a huge problem, that may be a time to consider such things. But that’s not happened.
“We have to be careful we don’t keep on imposing such restrictions on the trade that the trade becomes so lumbered by the cost of being a taxi driver in Walsall that they then go off and be a driver in Wolverhampton.”
Councillor Bobby Bains said: “We should be trying to make it easier to do business in Walsall.
“To make drivers do this every six months when it is currently every three years is a bit excessive and seems a lot of work for us when no real issues have been highlighted.”
