A High Court legal battle that had turned bitter between Worcester City Council and its taxi drivers looks to have been avoided after the council is looking to water down its policy on taxi vehicles, as reported in the Worcester News. In an effort to assist reducing the number of taxis after spiraling numbers, the licensing directors agreed that drivers must buy brand new cabs once their vehicles are deemed too old, much to the annoyance of taxi drivers

This was to replace the councils old rules in that once the car reaches around 12 years old, taxi owners were allowed to replace them with vehicles aged up to three. As a result, the Worcester Taxi Drivers Association
issued court action to challenge the change but the City council held a private meeting with the trade on Thursday for a fresh review of their policy.

The Chairman of the city’s licensing committee, Councillor Paul Denham, now says the policy will be changed and was quoted as saying:

“A number of people came along and convinced us it would be unreasonable to have to find so much extra money to buy a brand new taxi,” he said.

“Our feeling is that we now ought to change the policy so it’s one the drivers can live with. I think we can still look at ways of gradually improving the quality of the fleet without doing it in this way. We’ve listened, it’s not our intention to put people out of business – in some ways the policy was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Taxi drivers said they faced “ruins”, revealing new cabbies straight off the production line can cost nearly £40,000 – this is without the cost of even cheap taxi insurance and other expenses such as cheap taxi office liability insurance.

If they shop around, older taxis can typically be £10,000 cheaper, but cheap minicab insurance does actually increase in some cases as insurers look to prefer insuring new vehicles.

A new report will now be submitted to the next licensing committee meeting in June for a vote on a more relaxed policy after reviewing the situation. Worcester Taxi Drivers Association, said: “It’s a lot more than we had this time last week.”We’ve said all along the policy isn’t right – it’s good to hear they agree with us on that. But we need to see what they come up with. I’d be happier if they’d drop it now.”

The committee passed in February, a new rule which means no new taxi insurance drivers will be allowed a licence until numbers decline sharply.

Worcester Council currently has 263 hackney carriages, yet the cap is set at 230, so at least 34 must quit before any further plates are released..