Taxi driver stripped of licence after making video call

A Torbay taxi driver who maintained he was ‘the unluckiest person’ and had been unfairly singled out has had his licence revoked after councillors decided he posed a risk to public safety.

The driver, who has not been named, took part in a video call while at the wheel and carried passengers more than 40 times while his vehicle had no tax.
Members of Torbay Council’s regulatory sub-committee decided to revoke his driving and operating licences with immediate effect.
Information supplied by the police listed several reports of harassment, and councillors decided the driver’s claims to have been unlucky ‘demonstrated a lack of self-awareness and responsibility for his actions’.
They decided it was ‘far-fetched’ for him to plead that he was being unfairly singled out, and his pattern of behaviour over an extensive time period was the result of his own actions and behaviours.
The driver told members of the committee that the complaints arose from a small number of individuals who knew one another, and were based around business, financial and family disputes. People were colluding against him, he said, including other taxi drivers.
A report of the sub-committee meeting says: “Members found the respondent’s response to be fanciful.” It goes on to say that the driver had shown a ‘pattern of sustained behaviour and communication that was wholly inappropriate’.
And it points out that the driver had not denied sitting outside the home of his business partner in the middle of the night and sending an ‘excessive’ amount of text messages when he had been asked to stop. He continued to send messages into the early hours of the morning and for days on end, the report goes on.
It sums up: “Members were in no doubt that it was appropriate and proportionate to revoke the respondent’s Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Drivers Licence and Private Hire Operators Licence as they were not satisfied that he was a fit and proper person to be a licensed driver or a private hire operator for Torbay Council.”