CONTROVERSIAL cab firm Uber has been issued a licence to operate in Poole, the Daily Echo can reveal.
The American private hire service, which uses a mobile phone app with GPS mapping and cashless payment system, already operates in Southampton and Portsmouth.
Earlier this year the Echo reported how the San Francisco-based firm was in talks with Bournemouth Council. Now, neighbouring Borough of Poole (BOP) has confirmed Uber has been issued a licence to operate on its streets.
Cllr Marion Pope, representing Merley and Bearwood ward, has already resigned from BOP’s licensing committee over the issue. She tendered her resignation on Monday after learning the decision to issue an Uber licence had been made by a council officer under delegated powers.
Meanwhile, Cllr Phil Eades says he has real concerns about the safety of Poole residents using Uber.
He explained: “We don’t know if their drivers are properly licensed, we don’t know if they’ve had criminal records checks and we don’t know if they can even speak English. We don’t know if the drivers driving for Uber are checked in the same way Borough of Poole licensed taxi drivers are.
“The whole point about the taxi licensing system is that it is supposed to offer protection to residents using taxis. I’m afraid if anyone can just rock up with a smart phone in their car and portray themselves as a taxi driver, then that worries me.”
Describing the committee as “toothless” Cllr Pope told the Echo: “There has to be openness and transparency in everything we do - that was not apparent here.”
Cllr Pope says she understands decisions need to be made by unelected officers in some council departments, such as planning, because there are so many applications.
But the independent councillor firmly believes any decision on Uber coming to Poole should have been taken in committee by elected members, to avoid accusations of inpropriety, and only after interested parties - such as taxi drivers - had chance to be consulted.
Cllr Pope said: “A taxi operator that wrote to me was unhappy because he’d just invested in two new vehicles and obviously would have liked to have made some representations.
“One of my concerns about Uber is that there’s been huge publicity about how badly the drivers are put upon.”
“If we have to defer to unelected officers for information about what is happening in Poole, then what is the point in being on the committee.”
As a concept Uber has courted controversy, accused in some parts of the world of undercutting established taxi services with low prices and unlicensed drivers.
BOP licensing team manager Frank Wenzel said: “Uber have applied and been granted a Private Hire Operators licence to work in Poole. Their application was processed in accordance with the council’s procedures which are the same for all applications received by the council for a Private Hire Operators licence.”
Earlier this year Bournemouth Council’s Cllr David Kelsey confirmed he’d met with representatives from Uber. He said: “We told them if they want to come here it will be treated the same as every other application. They will have to apply for an operator’s licence, even if it is online only.”
Uber was unavailable to comment.
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LONDON DRIVERLESS SHUTTLES
STEP into a taxi in south London later this year and you might not have to think about paying a tip. The UK’s first fully public trial of autonomous vehicles will soon be under way.
For four weeks, a fleet of driverless shuttles will each ferry up to five passengers and a “safety warden” along a 2-kilometre route in Greenwich. Previous trials there and in the town of Milton Keynes required participants to register in advance. This time the vehicles will pick up anyone wanting a ride.
The four-stop route will connect a hotel close to the O2 Arena concert venue with the Millennium Village housing development. En route, the shuttles will also call at a river-bus stop and a cable car terminal.
Similar shuttles are already in use at London’s Heathrow airport, but are confined to a purpose-built area off limits to other traffic. In Greenwich, pedestrians and cyclists will be able to access the test route.
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