Slough operators face ‘excessive’ private hire fee hike

Private hire operators in Slough are facing a three-fold increase in licensing fees after councillors approved a proposed rise.

A new one-year license for private hire operators in Slough will increase from £153 to £600 – a 292% hike. And the cost of renewing a license for an operator with one vehicle will increase from £153 to £548.

In the neighbouring Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, a private hire operator’s license costs £318 for both a new one-year license and a one-year renewal.

Some councillors described the proposal as “excessive” and a disincentive to operate in the town. Cllr Waqas Sabah (Lib Dem, Farnham) said: “Surely, we’d want the town to thrive, and we’d want more operators in the town. Not to discourage them by charging them fees which are double what our neighbours are charging.”

He continued: “Considering the taxi trade in this town and currently what’s being offered to drivers or operators, the work is not there. We don’t have the high street; we don’t have those sorts of facilities.”

Russell Denney-Clarke, Slough’s trading standards and licensing manager, said drivers could go elsewhere if they thought the fees in Slough were too high. He said: “Everyone’s got freedom of choice and if they decide they wanted to go to Windsor because their fee is more favourable, then that is up to that person.”

Councillors compared the Slough fees to other cities in the UK, such as Manchester, which charges £2,790 for a new operator license, and Portsmouth, which charges £836. But Cllr Mohammed Nazir (Lib Dem, Manor Park and Stoke) said Slough was not comparable to any of these other large city local authorities.

Denney-Clarke said it took on average four-and-a-half hours to process an application, and the hourly cost of an officer to assess the application was £103. The council is “not allowed to make any profit” from charging operators this fee, he said.