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A CONTROVERSIAL plan to respray every cab in Birmingham a single colour has been put on ice after it emerged the consultants paid £24,000 to assess the scheme failed to ask drivers what they thought.
Furious city licensing chief David Osborne slammed Leicester-based consults Social Research Associates when he found most of Birmingham’s 5,000 private hire car drivers were unaware of the proposals until they appeared in the Birmingham Mail last week.
A licensing committee working group had suggested white, but yellow and silver were also being considered.
More than 70 angry black cab and private hire drivers besieged Birmingham’s licensing committee meeting to argue that they opposed the proposal and 500 signed a petition complaining they had not been consulted.
At one stage they were ordered to leave the room as individuals shouted and barracked the committee and argued amongst themselves.
Coun Osborne (Lib Dem, Acocks Green) is now demanding the firm undertakes the consultation free of charge before the proposal is reconsidered in a few months’ time.
He said: “It is quite clear that all the drivers were not consulted and we need to find out why.”
He said he personally favoured a single colour, similar to New York’s yellow cabs and Nottingham’s green taxis, rather than the ‘hotch potch of different colours, sizes and shapes’.
Speaking on behalf of private hire drivers Wasim Zaffer, of the TGWU, said: “They spoke to the hackney carriage drivers, but at no point did they approach the private hire drivers. What would one colour achieve?
“We are in the middle of a credit crunch, fewer people are using cabs, our drivers are paying a high price for fuel.”
Vice-chairman Coun Bruce Lines (Con, Bartley Green), whose working group had proposed the single colour, suggested that only newly-registered minicabs and those changing their cars need to adopt the chosen colour.
“I understand that drivers are concerned about cost at the moment and this has zero cost implications,” he said.
“The drivers are here today and have made their views known, but the most important people are the public, the citizens of Birmingham and visitors to the city.”
His amendment was defeated and the working group must now consult over the plan.
Other guidelines for private hire and hackney carriage drivers were approved including one effectively making black cabs a closed shop in the city. The committee decided there would be no new licences for hackney carriages for one year after October 16.
In return there were new limits on the ages of vehicles, 14 years for black cabs and eight for minicabs, and all cars over three years old must pass an MoT twice a year. Minicab drivers will be made to sit a scaled-down knowledge test.
Hackney carriages will also be made to display the city crest, while new signs will be issued to minicabs.
Private hire driver Hussain Iqbal, aged 39, of Banford Avenue, Washwood Heath, said he feared the changes would prove too expensive for many operators and they would turn their back on the job. “I can’t afford to spend £15,000 on a car and paint it yellow if I’ve got to sell it eight years later because nobody will want it,” he said.
“I agree that there should be a single colour, but it’s going to be hard to afford it. With the cost of insurance and fuel going up all the time, it’s becoming difficult to operate as a private hire driver.”
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