The Licensing Committee of Telford and Wrekin Council has published their meeting pack ahead of a meeting scheduled for the evening of Thursday 19 December 2024. The report pack for the meeting includes a proposal to consider whether to introduce a new policy that would create a new type of taxi licence, a verbal update from the Licensing Team about their recent activity, and the minutes from the committee's previous meeting in which they discussed their gambling policy.

Restricted Taxi Licences

The meeting pack for the Licensing Committee meeting scheduled for Thursday 19 December 2024 includes a report about the potential introduction of a new 'restricted' taxi licence for drivers, vehicles and operators. The report sets out the reasons for introducing this new licence, how it would work, and the implications of not introducing it.

The report states that this new type of licence would restrict the holders to carrying out pre-agreed types of work, like home to school transport contracts, rather than the full range of taxi work currently permitted by their taxi licences. The report says that the government's Deregulation Act 2015 changed the rules about where taxi drivers can work, meaning that so long as an operator, vehicle and driver are licensed by the same authority, private hire work may be carried out in any place across the country. This new, geographically unrestricted system, the report claims, has made it more important for councils to ensure that the Council’s offer to the private hire market is as compelling as possible and to recognise that different operators have different needs. It is claimed that introducing a restricted licence that would allow drivers to focus only on a specific type of work will make Telford and Wrekin Council more attractive to taxi operators.

The report argues that there are a number of benefits to introducing this restricted licence. The report states that:

By effectively restricting the licence of the operator, vehicle and driver, the Council and the operator can ensure that only the work which they undertake is carried out and reduces the potential for drivers to take on other work, which may not necessarily accord with the operator’s model of operation. Restricted licences would ensure that quick resolutions could be undertaken by both the Council and operator in situations where a driver chose to operate outside of their permitted use.

The report also asks the committee to give the Director: Policy & Governance the authority to decide what extra conditions should be attached to these new restricted licences and to decide what requirements should have to be met before the licences are granted. The report does say that the Licensing Committee will retain overall oversight and in the event of any issues, Licensing Committee will be consulted. It adds that the committee will be asked to decide on changes to how decisions are delegated to officers in the new year.

If the committee decides not to create the new restricted licences, the report argues that operators [may] move out of the local area, allowing for less local regulation and an impact on the income to the council that balances the cost of the service provision. This is because, the report says, some councils are seeing increased numbers of licence applications as a result of creating restricted licences. The report also argues that the new licence would help with problems experienced by operators in recruiting and retaining taxi drivers, claiming that [i]t is widely reported across the Private Hire Industry that the recruitment of drivers is becoming increasingly difficult.

The report says that the new scheme would support the council's priorities to ensure that '[e]veryone benefits from a thriving economy' and that '[a]ll neighbourhoods are a great place to live'.

Gambling Policy

The minutes from the meeting held on 24 October 2024, which are included in the meeting pack, record a discussion about Telford and Wrekin Council's Statement of Gambling Policy. The minutes say that the Licensing & Night-Time Economy Manager explained that the Council has a legal duty under the Gambling Act 2005 to review its gambling policy every three years, and that its policy was last updated in January 2022. The policy sets out the principles that the council uses when licensing gambling premises and explains how it seeks to meet its legal objectives when doing so. Those legal objectives, as listed in the minutes, are:

 Preventing gambling from being a source of crime or disorder, being associated with crime or disorder or being used to support crime;  Ensuring that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way; and  Protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by Gambling.

The minutes report that there was a public consultation on the new gambling policy between 22 July and 23 September 2024, during which no responses were received from the public.

The minutes also report that some Councillors asked the Licensing & Night-Time Economy Manager about the enforcement of the Gambling Act 2005, asking what processes are in place to test products provided by gambling businesses and whether there are any particular problems locally. The minutes report that the Licensing & Night-Time Economy Manager explained that all gambling businesses in Telford and Wrekin are inspected annually using guidance provided by the Gambling Commission. They added that in the last round of inspections, carried out six weeks before the meeting, all gambling businesses had passed, though one required some further investigation. They went on to explain that there have been few complaints about gambling premises in Telford and Wrekin, and that any problems that have arisen have mostly related to online gambling. The minutes report that the Director: Policy & Governance reassured the committee that problems with gambling premises and underage gambling are uncommon locally.

The minutes report that the committee decided to approve the new Statement of Gambling Policy and that they recommended that the full council adopt it. The minutes also record a request by the Director: Policy & Governance that councillors join officers on visits to gambling premises, licensed premises and taxi ranks, in order to give them a flavour of the work that took place in relation to enforcement. The minutes record that councillors welcomed this suggestion.