Agenda item

Sean Murphy, Public Protection Manager, introduced the Licensing Annual Report 2020/21 to Members which gave a summary of the activity of the Committee and the Licensing service.  It was intended that future reports would be brought to Committee in the first meeting following the end of the previous financial year.

The report noted that two Hearings had taken place in 2020 and summarised the Licenses that had been granted.  The pandemic had significantly impacted on the Licensing trade as well as on the service and the report highlighted the experiences and responses of both. Appendix A of the report set out the number of active Licenses in the area which showed, for example, the fall in Hackney Carriage vehicles, Private Hire vehicles and Animal Boarding establishments to the end of March 2021.

Councillor Linden advised that his next-door neighbour kept dogs for a short period of time on a commercial basis which should be noted under Declarations of Interest.

Councillor Marsh reiterated his message from previous years that he was disappointed there had been no contribution from the Committee towards reducing carbon output, bearing in mind the Council’s Environment Strategy, whilst there was an opportunity to do so with the hundreds of licensed vehicles.  Councillor Marsh said one meeting related to this initiative had taken place with the trade who had shown some interest whilst pointing out the difficulties associated with moving to fully electric vehicles due to the lack of electric charging points at taxi ranks.  Councillor Marsh was hopeful that as the country moved out of the pandemic, there would be an opportunity for the Committee to re-visit this issue and to look towards a scheme which would benefit the trade and individual drivers and businesses to be able to switch to electric vehicles, and for the Council to show leadership in this regard.

Councillor Abbs agreed with the point made by Councillor Marsh about the impact of Covid-19 and finding a way of helping the taxi trade and was in support of the need for charging points, particularly in town centres, which was an essential component in giving all drivers the ability to switch to cleaner energy.  Encouragement to do so did not relate directly with this Committee but fell within the remit of other bodies, such as Environment, but was a general statement made by Councillor Abbs to be noted by the appropriate departments within the Council for action to be taken on the infrastructure to promote a greener route for vehicle use.

Moira Fraser said that at the last taxi trade meeting, colleagues from the Environment Delivery team were in attendance.  A further meeting with the trade had been arranged to take place on 17^th November to address any myths around the use of electric vehicles for taxi purposes which would include representation from a London taxi driver who drove an electric vehicle who could offer peer-to-peer support and the opportunity for members of the trade to test-drive an electric vehicle.  There was space for 20 drivers to attend the event and to-date 10 drivers had reserved a space.   As part of addressing issues related to cleaner energy, the new Air Quality Officer had also attended a meeting to speak to drivers about air quality and the anti-idling campaign.

Councillor Jones said he fully endorsed the principles promoted to encourage cleaner energy and that the last taxi trade meeting had been open for any Member to attend and he therefore encouraged the Committee to keep up-to-date with the issues being addressed.  Councillor Jones added that the reports from the meetings explained why the trade were reluctant to switch to electric vehicles, which was not as a result of lack of pressure from the Council but were due to issues which were out of the control of the Council.

Councillor Jones referred to the single case management system which had enabled the Committee to propose (later in the agenda) quite favourable fees and charges and asked for an update on the progress of the implementation of that system.  Sean Murphy said there had been challenges with the system, in particular the lack of staff available to engage with the process due to the pandemic.  However, the system was still on target to be delivered in February 2022 and fully operational by 1^st April 2022 so that no legacy systems would be in place by the start of the new financial year.  Trade members would be invited to assist with the testing of the system to make sure that it worked for them.

RESOLVED that the Committee NOTED the content of the report including the work of the Licensing Committee and Service related activity for 2020/21.