Mayor leads taxi licence reform calls

HOPES AMENDMENT TO DEVOLUTION BILL WILL PUT AN END TO OUT-OF-AREA LICENSING ISSUE

- By GEORGE LYTHGOE Local Democracy Reporting Service

ANDY Burnham has called on Parliament to back a campaign to fix the 'broken taxi system' and crack down on out-of-area cabbies.

Greater Manchester has been plagued by huge numbers of private hire vehicles operating under apps such as Uber, but being licensed with another local authority miles away.

One of the big perpetrators of this is Wolverhampton City Council, who licence 35 per cent of all the private hire drivers in the city-region, according to a Freedom of Information request (FOI) submitted by the LDRS last year.

It has been a problem the Greater Manchester mayor and his combined authority (GMCA) have been working to try and fix for some time.