Cardiff taxi drivers are up in arms after their local Council announced a huge increase in their annual taxi licence fee, raising it from £230 to £313, which will now see them paying a whopping £114 more than London taxi drivers.
The increase was decided by a unanimous vote at the Council’s Public Protection Committee meeting, where groups of furious taxi drivers listened from the public gallery.
Abdi Ahmed, chairman of the Union of Taxi Drivers said: “These fine men and women that serve the city day-in and day-out are being persecuted by the council and it’s not fair.
“We are not in a position to cover the wages and costs of the council because of cuts elsewhere.”
Crime Doesn’t Pay
Cardiff Council said the hike in fees was to cover the extra costs that came with providing more taxi marshals at taxi ranks, which they believed would cut down crime on cabbies. The committee backed Conservative Councilor Lyn Hudson’s proposal that drivers should pick up 50% of the marshalling costs.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat councilor Ed Bridge argued that the fee should exclude any marshalling costs until the work had been carried out, proving how much of an effect the marshals had on hackney carriage drivers.
He commented: “I think they have been given a raw deal because we’re charging them for 50% of taxi marshals without knowing which of those marshals is entirely or not at all contributing to what those drivers receive in return.
“Until we have done the work, we can’t say what’s a fair amount.”