Guernsey’s taxi sector ‘needs a better model’
TAXI and private hire services in the island need to move to a model that works better for those in the industry and for the economy, society and environment, the president of the committee leading the review said at the weekend.
Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez, president of the Environment & Infrastructure Committee, admitted that there was ‘no silver bullet’ to the deep-seated and historical problems within the sector, which is increasingly seeing islanders complain that they cannot get a taxi when they want one.
‘We know many customers and drivers have been concerned about some of the problems that have been reported recently, including a lack of taxi availability, high costs and unreliability,’ she said.
‘Like us, they’re also concerned about the sector’s long-term sustainability. At the same time we know many drivers are working long and anti-social hours, under more pressure because the sector as a whole is short of drivers.’
The committee was delivered the report last week and took a first look at it on Friday, before publishing it over the weekend and meeting taxi drivers on Saturday to update them.
‘Our committee has already begun to look at the recommendations but it’s still early, and we now want to hear the views of stakeholders. We want to work with customers and drivers,’ said Deputy de Sausmarez.
The review makes wide-ranging recommendations across a number of areas including quantity control, the licensing of drivers, vehicles, tariffs, accessibility, enforcement and regulatory management, sector representation and marketing.
The recommendations are aimed at opening up the market to capacity growth, investment, innovation and a more flexible labour supply, and to improve the customer experience by enabling easier booking, improved accessibility, greener vehicles and assurances of reliability.
Among the recommendations is for 20 additional non-transferable taxi plates to be issued to address the inability of the current supply to meet consumer requirements.
