Row over taxis has "damaged city's reputation"

[dutchman]

Business leaders in Coventry are accusing the council of letting taxi drivers hold the city to ransom.



They’re furious a row over licences was only resolved yesterday, after two weeks’ worth of strikes.

Darren Jones from the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce says the dispute may have caused long-term damage to the city’s hopes of becoming an international force for business:

“Anyone that has turned up from London say to Coventry station to go to a meeting now thinks we’re some ‘Mickey Mouse’ backward city; it is totally wrong that a group of people can hold a city to ransom and its economy to ransom.

“Some people turn up to here because it’s Coventry firms selling to them – if they couldn’t get to that meeting and they just jumped back onto the next train Coventry just lost that income, Coventry jobs affecting, Coventry people affected and Coventry taxi drivers affected.”

Well taxi drivers are now looking at taking legal action because officials have refused to impose a temporary cap on the number of taxi licences being issued.

Councillors have repeatedly said this would be illegal without conducting a survey first.

Drivers went back to work after the council agreed to pay for that study, with drivers reimbursing them through their own licence fees.

Councillor Lindsley Harvard, Cabinet Member for City Services, said: “(If we were taken to court), the only damage it would do would be to the time the survey would take and the cost of it.”

“We only have a certain amount of money – so we wouldn’t want to jeopardise that happening.”

“We’ve got a £36 million cut coming from central government, so we’re ill-advised to spend money on things like lawsuits.”

Imran Zaman, chairman of Coventry’s Taxi Association, told Mercia: “We’ve held the public long enough, we’ve held ourselves up long enough, and we need to bring the city back to normality.”

“But there’s no point drivers staying at home annoying the public when the only people who can decide this are the courts.”

The drivers’ first walkout in January – which lasted five days – was prompted when two cabbies were fined by police for driving over pavements in the city centre.

However, a Mercia survey has found only 52% of people in Coventry felt ‘affected’ by the strikes, with a significant proportion making alternative travel arrangements.

Some 13% weren’t aware industrial action was taking place at all.

[rebbonk]

"...the dispute may have caused long-term damage to the city’s hopes of becoming an international force for business" - Darren Jones needs to open his eyes to reality. International force! International farce maybe.

The biggest losers in this whole sorry episode are the idiot Taxi drivers who have now lost several day's wages that they will never recover.