It has been some time since our last edition and for this we apologise, we aim to produce The Cabby on a bi-monthly basis but due to other commitments with have failed to produce an edition for a number of months. We will endeavour to put this right and produce The Cabby on a regular basis.

The RAC have decided  to no longer cover taxis under their standard policy, you can read more about this late in this edition.

We are still looking for contributors to this newsletter as I am sure that you are by now getting bored with my rantings, if you have anything that you would like to see included in The Cabby then please forward it to us.

The Public Carriage Office have still not announced the conclusion to the Review of the review to the conditions of fitness for London, the trade were promised that an announcement would be made by the end of August 2005 but so far no announcement has been made, this review is now long overdue as it was stated originally that it would take 6 months to compete which was nearly 2 years ago, we will not be holding our breath waiting for the announcement.
 

This years Magical Taxi Tour will leave Canary Wharf on Friday 23rd September 2005 in a convoy of over 100 vehicles destined for Disneyland Pairs.

Supported by the Police, AA and The London Ambulance service over 200 seriously ill children will spend the time of their life in Disney.

All the money needed to fund this event is raised entirely by the Disney Committee of the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers.

If you see us on our way then please give us an enthusiastic wave as we pass you by.
 

Well it seems that the RAC no longer want to cover taxis under their normal coverinstead wanting to charge us a higher rate under their commercial vehicles policy, a number of drivers have only found this out when trying to use the service only to be told by the RAC call centre that the RAC do not cover taxis. The RAC it seems are quite happy to accept your renewal fee without advising the customer of their change of policy.

1 Years RAC cover is given free of charge when purchasing a new Taxi, this is standard as the breakdown contract for new vehicles from LTI was awarded to the RAC some time ago, some drivers then continued with the RAC renewing after the initial free 1 years cover expired only to be informed when trying to use the service that they were not covered. Now I may be missing something here, but surely the RAC knew that the vehicle was a Taxi when accepting the members renewal fee as the vehicle was originally covered under the LTI policy and unless things have changed in Coventry LTI only produce taxis.

LTI still continue to offer 1 years free RAC cover on a new taxi. and the RAC will cover the taxi during its first year but will not after the initial year has expired, but they are still sending out renewal forms to drivers who's first year has ended. It is about time that LTI supported the trade that keeps it in existence and dumped the RAC and awarded the contract to the AA who at present have no plans to alter their cover with regards to taxis.

The RAC state that they will no longer cover taxis or private hire vehicles but how do the RAC know whether a car is a private hire vehicle or not, they have no way of telling whether it is a private hire vehicle when the member calls for assistance so one can only assume that drivers of private hire cars will continue to obtain assistance from the RAC.

We would advise all Taxi drivers not to renew their cover with the RAC and also to to convince their friends and family to follow suit.
 

The traditional accent of East London, known as Cockney, is disappearing because of population shifts, according to researchers.

A study by the British Broadcasting Corp. found that young people in the East End of the city speak in a dialect combining elements of Bangladeshi and Cockney, reflecting the changing make-up of the area.

This is very exciting for linguists, the language of London is changing,'' said Sue Fox, a research fellow at Queen Mary College, University of London, who carried out the study.

In East London ''the majority of young people of school age are of Bangladeshi origin and this has had tremendous impact on the dialect spoken in the area,'' Fox said in a press release.

Researchers carried out a nine-month study of young people at a youth club in the Tower Hamlets borough. They found the size of the area's Bangladeshi community had direct influence on the local dialect.

Words such as 'nang,' meaning good, and 'creps,' meaning trainers, have been adopted by white children with Bangladeshi friends, the researchers said.

The accent is not disappearing altogether. Laura Wright, a senior lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge, said Cockney was moving to towns outside London.

Kings Cross Station-picking up of disabled persons by taxi
It has been brought to the attention of the Public Carriage Office by the Duty Station Manager at Kings Cross Station that on 17 March 2005 a licensed taxi driver refused to pick up a disabled passenger who had been prioritised to the front of the taxi passenger queue by station staff.
The policy of the station is to allow disabled passengers requiring a taxi to go to the head of the queue of passengers and to be assisted by staff. Taxi drivers are asked to note this arrangement which is for the benefit of disabled passengers. The PCO fully supports initiatives of this nature and would encourage all taxi drivers to be accommodating of the needs of those with disabilities.
Roy Ellis
31 March 2005 Head of the Public Carriage Office

Editors Comment

The PCO released the above notice, now although we do not condone the actions of the taxi driver in question and we always try help disabled passengers where possible there is a problem with picking up wheelchair users at Kings Cross Station.

Prioritising disabled passengers to the front of the queue has to be commended, but if the person is a wheelchair user then the driver needs to use the ramps to safely load the passenger into the taxi. Now this presents a problem, the passenger needs to be loaded from the nearside of the vehicle but the rank is to the offside of the vehicle, so the ramps need to be extended into the path of taxis trying to leave the station. It can take up to 15 minutes to deploy the ramps, load the passenger and the stow the ramps away again, all this while the queue of taxis trying to leave the station builds up and also the queue of passengers waiting for a taxi builds also.

There needs to be a more workable practice put into place by Kings Cross Station to deal with this problem and maybe the PCO should have taken a closer look at the situation before issuing the notice.

The Mayor of London, Transport for London (TfL) and Bromley Council are launching a pilot safety initiative on Friday 5 August which will provide a marshalled taxi rank in Bromley Town Centre, as part of the Safer Travel at Night campaign.

The marshalled rank will deter illegal taxi touts

The Public Carriage Office (PCO) have been working with local police, the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA), Bromley Council, and Bromley's licensed drivers to introduce the late night marshalled taxi rank pilot scheme to late night visitors of Bromley town centre.

Ed Thompson, Taxi and Private Hire Director, PCO, said: "The introduction of a marshalled taxi rank in the West End of London proved a great success and we hope that it will have the same effect in Bromley.

"The rank will provide a safe focal point for people wanting a legitimate taxi and a deterrent to illegal taxi touts.

"Not only will it be marshalled but it will also be covered by CCTV as well as regular patrols by the police."

Councillor George Taylor, Executive Councillor for the Environment said: "This is the first taxi rank at this end of the town centre and, more importantly, the first one to be marshalled.

Quick, safe option

"It will make it much more convenient and safer for people to get home late at night.

"We are very keen on getting people home quickly and safely and reducing public disorder - this is precisely what this scheme will achieve."

Tony Ellis, London Taxi Drivers Association, said: "Local licensed taxi drivers fully support this scheme.

"It will be marshalled by licensed taxi drivers who will be organising the queues and making sure that passengers get into licensed taxis, quickly, efficiently and safely."

The pilot scheme will initially operate for three months on Fridays and Saturdays between the hours of 10pm and 2am and will be based in Market Square (just outside the Costa Coffee).
 

After a fierce outcry from taxi drivers the Public Carriage Office state that there are no plans to encourage Londoners to haggle with taxi drivers over fares.

Following last year’s Office of Fair Trading nationwide report on taxi and private hire regulation, it was recommended that all UK local authorities should set fare tariffs which represent the maximum that can be charged, and not fixed or minimum fares. In London this was in fact already the case.

Drivers have as far as I can remember negotiated with passengers who are considering a long journey although they are not compelled to offer a fare lower than that displayed on the taximeter at the end of the journey.
 

There was a piece on the news the other night about Public Conveniences, the reporter stated that Public Toilets had disappeared at the rate of 1/3 in the last five years, now to Taxi Drivers this is not a surprise, trying to find a toilet that is open whilst out working, and one where you will avoid a parking ticket is almost impossible. Those drivers who work nights find the situation even worse.

Recently the Public Carriage Office sent out a notice regarding taxi drivers urinating in the street, trying to discourage them from doing so. The question is with the severe lack of public toilets open, especially of a night, what are we supposed to do?

With this in mind we intend to put together a list of public toilets that are available for use by taxi drivers, the list will have public toilets, friendly places that will let you use the toilet and whether they are available 24 hours a day or not.

So please send in your submission for inclusion into the list.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to obtain accurate flight information from any of the airports which presents a big problem when a driver is trying to meet passengers from a specific flight. BAA offer different information depending on the media you use to obtain flight arrival time. On one particular occasion whilst trying to obtain information on a flight arriving at Heathrow BAA's website offered one time whilst BAA's flying messenger text service offered different information and when calling the telephone enquiry line we were given completely different information once again.

The problem is not only confined to Heathrow, both Gatwick and Stansted seem to have the same problem, whilst London City Airport seems to run a system that is a mystery to everyone.

one of our drivers was meeting a flight a London City Airport a couple of days ago, he entered the terminal building a few minutes after the flight had landed and the flight had completely disappeared off the flight information board.

The thing that I find amazing is surely the airport know where the plane is, because if they don't then we are just waiting for a disaster to happen.

Come on BAA give us a chance, if we are to carry on serving your passengers then we really do need to know when the flight is due to arrive.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be changing the way in which The Cabby is sent out, the present mailing list is very basic in features so we are going to upgrade to a newer mailing program.

The new mailing program will give us greater control over how and when The Cabby is sent out, it will also be easier to delete subscribers whose e-mail address is no longer valid.

So please be patient and if you receive an e-mail saying that you have been subscribed to The Cabby it is just indicating that we have transferred your e-mail address over to the new format.

The Public Carriage Office have finally decided that it would be good to actually communicate with people and have introduced a new one number contact telephone number.

The new number is 0845 602 7000.

It remains to be seen as to whether this number will be answered or if you will be left hanging on the line as previous experiences have proved.
 

For those of you that frequent Southbank Service Station the fact that the garage has no fuel will come as no surprise. The garage recently changed from BP to Texaco because of so called supply problems, during last year there was period o time when there was no fuel available and everyone thought that after the change to Texaco things would change, and it did, but it was to be short lived.

Southbanks has not had any fuel since the beginning of the year, the staff seem to be as much in the dark regarding the problem as the customers, they keep promising that a delivery is due any day, but they do not know which day and to date no fuel has been delivered to the garage.

The situation is now getting worse, the toilets at the garage (which were once the cleanest toilets that I have seen in a garage) are now an absolute disgrace, the are continuously flooded and are not cleaned very often, it seems that the cleaner puts in an appearance once the water level in the toilet is so deep that you would fill your shoes if you tried to walk in.

The rubbish has not been collected for a number of weeks and is now piling up to such an extent that it has now taken over 4 parking spaces within the site. The rats are running riot over the rubbish which must pose some sort of health implications to those who use the site and work there.

It seems crazy that a site that used to have a delivery of fuel a day can go to have no fuel for over 6 months. Lets hope that the site is sold soon to a new owner that will take an interest in the business and get it back on its feet as the present one seems to have none at all.
 

We are getting an increasing number of enquiries at our offices regarding property left in the back of London Taxi's.

Transport for London have a dedicated lost property office for London Taxis, Buses and Tubes at 200 Baker Street.

The procedure for property left in the back of Taxis is that the driver has up to 24 hours to hand the property into a Police Station , it then gets transferred to the Lost Property Office at 200 Baker Street where it gets logged and stored.

This whole procedure can take up to 5 days before you are able to reclaim your property.

You can contact the lost property office on 020 7918 2000.
 

It is with regret that we have to announce the closure of our Taxi-News.co.uk website, the site was hacked and totally destroyed by someone a couple of months ago, this left us with a problem, should we have redesigned the site and relaunch or just redirect all traffic to this site for the foreseeable future, we decided to do the latter due to time constraints.

We hope to re-launch the site time in the new year but until then The Cabby will be the main source of on-line news for the UK Taxi trade from the London Taxi Website.

Taxi drivers, have you ever had to refuse a “roader” because the customer wants to pay by credit card. To those of you on a radio circuit or Zingo this will not pose a problem, but what of those drivers who only work the streets. Well there are a few different options available. The use of credit cards as payment for Taxi fares is becoming more widespread with every year that passes, I know that some of you are dubious about accepting credit card payments but if you follow the procedures then you should encounter no problems. Research shows that many of the longer journey’s these days are paid for by credit or debit cards, and on occasions passengers are more likely to travel further if they can pay by credit or debit card. There are a few options open to those taxi drivers who are interested in accepting credit cards of which we have given an explanation below of the most popular schemes.

Read More>>
 

The introduction of the London Congestion Charge may not have met with universal acclaim, and opinions are still divided on introducing it elsewhere in the UK, but the capital can claim some credit for a new initiative that should defiantly be spread far wider - the Taxiwise Scheme.

The dangers facing women using bogus minicabs and unlicensed private hire vehicles are unfortunately making the news more and more frequently. No national figures are available but in London alone at least one women is attacked every week by illegal minicab drivers and the police believe the true figure is much higher as many attacks go unreported.

Even if the figure of the regions is only comparable to London then it is frighteningly widespread. This is a nationwide problem with recent attacks reported by the local press in towns and cities throughout the UK.

For example in Grimsby a man claiming to be a taxi driver indecently assaulted a 17-year-old girl in the back of his car before taking her home. A women was sprayed in the face with a noxious substance as she tried to escape from a bogus minicab driver in Birmingham and a women was sexually assaulted in Wrexham after accepting a lift from a man posing as a taxi driver.

Taxiwise is a unique partnership between Transport for London (TfL), and the Metropolitan police. It has increased the number of dedicated officers available to enforce the law relating to taxis and minicabs.

Despite these increased measures, findings from a recent survey of Londoners out late in the west End worryingly show 50 per cent of respondents believed that minicabs were allowed to pick them up if approached in the street.

This is in fact illegal and you should never accept a ride with someone who "Touts" for your business.

Taxiwise believe that the figure in the regions could be even higher due to the fact that the instantly recognisable London taxi is a rarer sight.

Bogus drivers prey on the fact that many people don't know how to distinguish between a licensed and a non licensed vehicle and this is compounded at the end of the night out when they are more interested in getting home quickly than stopping to check what sort of vehicle they are getting into.

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Do you feel that you have something to offer The Cabby? would you like to put your views across, send us in your contributions. The Cabby is the Taxi Trades largest online newsletter sent direct to e-mail inboxes of the taxi trade and those interested in London and it's World famous taxi's. Unfortunately we cannot afford to pay for your contribution as this newsletter has no funding but we welcome any input no matter how large or small.
 

Maybe you would like to contribute something to the next Cabby or just comment on something within this issue, maybe you have a question that you would like answered, please feel free to send us anything you like news.thecabby@london-taxi.co.uk