Issue - meetings

Recommendations:

To confirm the abolition of the seven predecessor district/borough hackney carriage zones for Craven, Hambleton, Harrogate, Richmondshire, Ryedale, Scarborough and Selby and to confirm that all provisions of the hackney carriage licensing regime be applied across the whole of the administrative area of North Yorkshire Council pursuant to paragraph 25, Schedule 14 to the Local Government Act 1972 with effect from 30 November 2023.

Considered – a report of the Corporate Director for Environment seeking confirmation of the Council’s position on abolishing the seven predecessor authority hackney carriage zones and operating a single hackney carriage zone for North Yorkshire.

Mr Richard Fieldman read out his public participation submission as follows:

“I speak on behalf of 70 members of the hackney carriage trade from across North Yorkshire.  Although we are opposed to the Council abolishing the seven legacy hackney carriage zones, if that were the Council’s intention, there is a straightforward statutory process a council must follow.

North Yorkshire Council failed to follow that process. Astonishingly, it appears not a single licensing officer or lawyer from any of the eight former local authorities were aware of the statutory requirements.

The Council now dances on a pinhead in an attempt to avoid openly admitting its mistake.  Rather than honestly and openly accept it did not abolish the hackney carriage zones, it attempts to rely on the legal maxim of ‘presumptive regularity’.  That simply means that, if the Council passed a resolution to abolish hackney carriage zones, it is to be accepted it did so, unless overturned by the courts, even though it did not comply with the statutory requirements and admits it did not do so.

But no such resolution was ever passed. There is no resolution to rely on. There is no basis on which the Council can rely on presumptive regularity.  As a result, despite officer assertions to the contrary, the seven legacy hackney carriage zones legally remain to this day.

Officers ask you to pass a resolution today to regularise the position, to correct their procedural mistakes, but can you do so?  In a word, “no”, because passing a resolution to abolish hackney carriage zones is a function reserved to the Full Council or, more precisely, it is not a function that is an executive function or one that can be exercised by the Executive.

In the circumstances, on behalf of myself and those on whose behalf I speak, I ask you not to compound an already bad position by passing an illegal resolution, but to instead refer this matter to the Full Council for a full and proper consideration of the proposal to abolish the hackney carriage zones.

If a council passes a resolution to abolish hackney carriage zones it cannot be reversed –

this is a one-way street, down which you can only go once. If you refer this matter to Full Council, and the Council then follows the statutory process, and Full Council passes the appropriate resolution, we trust the Council will then recognise all hackney carriages as North Yorkshire hackney carriages by removing the zonal markings; and applying the same rules to all hackney carriages and their drivers, irrespective of which former district council by which they were previously licensed.

So, in all the circumstances, I ask you not to pass the resolution officers ask you to pass, and to instead refer this matter to Full Council. If  ...  view the full minutes text for item 325