Licensed Drivers
GETT ARE GIVING £5 OFF TO TREAT YOUR MUM IN MOTHERS DAY
BRIGHTON/LEWES DEMO
Scores of taxi drivers have applied for new licenses in Lewes following Uber’s announcement it was to stop TfL licensed drivers using its app in Brighton and Hove, sparking fears Uber drivers are simply exploiting a different licensing loophole.
Brighton and Hove taxi drivers protested in Lewes yesterday – where 130 drivers have applied for a licence since Uber announced it was creating new regions within which its drivers would be able to work.
Many will have been directed there by the Uber website, which directly compares the estimated cost and time taken to obtain a license in the two authorities, saying it takes £1,112 and 40 weeks to get a drivers’ licence in Brighton compared to £422 and eight weeks in Lewes.
Brighton and Hove also has some of the stiffest licensing conditions in the country, many of which are outlined in what is known in the trade as the “blue book”, and include a requirement for CCTV and all new vehicles to be wheelchair accessible.
All Brighton and Hove based private hire operators require their drivers to be licensed by the city council – but Uber has until now allowed drivers licensed anywhere in the country to use the app within the city, taking advantage of the deregulation of cross-border restrictions.
Following protests from local authorities, who are unable to carry out enforcement on rogue drivers working on their patch if they are licensed elsewhere, Uber last month announced it was splitting the UK into regions, and drivers would only be able to work in the region in which they held a license.
But city taxi drivers – both private hire and hackney – say Lewes District Council’s taxi rules are more relaxed than Brighton’s, and believe Uber is directing Brighton based drivers previously licensed with TfL to apply there instead.
Andy Peters, secretary of the GMB Brighton and Hove taxi section, said: “The creation of oversized mythical ‘regions’ by Uber, serves only to further complicate, confuse and add more potential acrimony to a previously (prior to Uber’s arrival) simplistic system of local licensing.
“It will do nothing to eradicate the spectre of Uber vehicles licensed in one area but operating in another many, many miles away from enforcement and the prying eyes of their home licensing authority.
“Where this leaves passenger safety is again, anyone’s guess? This announcement is nothing more than the usual ‘smoke and mirrors’ and should be viewed with extreme caution and what’s more, taken with a bucket load of salt!”
A spokesman for Lewes District Council said: “If Lewes District Council receives an application for a Private Hire Licence, we have a duty to process the application.
“A licence will be granted if the driver is a fit and proper person. We are not able to refuse a licence on the basis that there are too many drivers or that they might operate outside our geographical area, in particular Brighton.
“The council understands the frustration this causes the taxi trade, but we are obliged to work within the legislative framework.”
The new regions are set to come into force on March 14. However, Uber is understood to have told drivers in some areas of the UK such as Surrey that they will be able to continue driving here until June.
Latest figures from TfL showed that 78 drivers were licensed with them using addresses with a BN1, BN2 or BN3 postcode.
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WOULD YOU PUT YOUR TEENAGE DAUGHTER IN A UBERK ?
Many parents now rely on the taxi app to avoid all that late-night ferrying, but two recent convictions raise a disturbing question - Should you ever put your teenage daughter in an Uber?
Uber rules outline drivers should not permit anyone under-18 to travel alone
The car service has been a hit as it's often cheaper and quicker than other taxis
Driver Spyros Ntounis, 35, was convicted for attempting to groom a 14-year-old
Three other women had separately complained to Uber about his behaviour
Figures suggest sex attacks involving Uber drivers could be almost one a week
Night-time and a 14-year-old girl climbs into a waiting cab. As the vehicle heads across South London to her suburban family home, she and the 35-year-old driver, Spyros Ntounis, begin chatting.
He offers her chewing gum and asks what she has been up to and how old she is. Next, he gives her his telephone number, saying if she ever needs a lift, she should call him. He gets her to text him there and then, so he can save her number.
Ntounis then tells the girl she is 'hot' and that she has 'nice lips'.
She is alarmed that a man old enough to be her father is talking to her in this way and her unease grows as he slows the car to a 5mph crawl.
'He said he wanted to spend more time with me,' she later recalled.
Finally arriving home, the girl ran inside. But the next morning, she received the first of several messages.
Ntounis asked if she was 'OK' before, creepily, offering to 'give her lessons' in anything she wanted. He lied, saying he was 26, and asked if he had 'passed the age test', then tried to persuade her to meet him. 'I would love it,' he wrote.
Worried, the girl told her parents about the unwanted advances. They called the police, Ntounis was arrested and, following a trial at Kingston Crown Court a few weeks ago, he was convicted of attempting to groom an underage girl. He could face jail when sentenced this month.
A lucky escape, one might conclude. But the details of this case should ring further alarm bells — because Ntounis was a driver for Uber, the controversial company behind the hugely popular taxi-hailing app, even though he had a criminal conviction for dishonesty and had been accused of sexually harassing other passengers.
In the months before the incident with the teenage girl, three other women had separately complained to Uber about his inappropriate behaviour.
It was claimed he told the first he felt 'horny', while starting an 'inappropriate' conversation with the second one, whom he stared at continuously as he drove.
And the day before picking up the 14-year-old, he had asked a third woman if he could 'satisfy her needs'.
What's more, Ntounis's case is not a one-off. On the same day that he was found guilty, Shahid Qureshi, another Uber driver, was convicted at Inner London Crown Court of two counts of sexual assault. The first related to a woman he groped in 2016; the second to a 16-year-old exchange student.
His initial victim had complained to Uber, who had not reported the matter to police — leaving him free to carry on working.
Both of these cases will fuel concerns about how Uber operates.
According to a company rule, under-18s should not travel alone in Uber cars. 'Drivers are not supposed to pick up people under 18 — but, say they get a job and the fare's under 18. What do they do?' asks Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association and a vocal opponent of Uber. 'Of course, they take it.'
He adds: 'The reason Uber is so popular is because it's so cheap. So, rather than get out of bed in the middle of the night to pick up their daughter from her mate's, parents send an Uber. But people are sacrificing common sense for a pound or two. Why would you put your 16-year-old daughter in a stranger's car?'
Of course, coming from a 'rival' organisation, such words could be sour grapes.
People are sacrificing common sense for a pound or two. Why would you put your 16-year-old daughter in a stranger's car? - Steve McNamara
Because since Uber launched here in 2012, it has proved a huge hit — one that has severely dented the income of other taxi drivers and cab firms. Uber customers download a smartphone app with which they can hail a minicab. A nearby driver is automatically summoned, often making it quicker, easier and cheaper than phoning a minicab or hailing a taxi.
In London, the number of Uber vehicles exceeds the 24,000 black cabs — and Uber now has more than 40,000 drivers across some 40 UK towns and cities.
But the issue of passenger safety remains. Figures last year suggested that sex attacks involving Uber drivers could be running at almost one a week and, last August, it emerged that police had written to Transport for London (TfL), the authority responsible for licensing private hire drivers in the Capital, to express concerns the company was 'covering up' sex attacks to protect its reputation.
There was more drama last September when TfL stripped Uber of its license, for not being a 'fit and proper' company.
Uber is appealing the decision and is allowed to continue operating in London during the appeal process.
Last month, it vowed to proactively report complaints to police and to set up a 24-hour hotline for passengers.
Of course, for some, that may be too little, too late.
The Mail has established that, in the case of Ntounis, female passengers had complained to Uber about him in October and November 2016 and again on April 21 last year. He picked up the 14-year-old girl the day after the third complaint. Asked if they had alerted police to the earlier complaints, an Uber spokesman said they hadn't, but had 'warned' Ntounis. He was suspended only after police alerted them to his arrest for the incident with the 14-year-old.
The Mail can also reveal that Ntounis had been licensed as a private hire driver by TfL in September 2014. The following month, he was convicted of dishonesty and given a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for 24 months. TfL was not informed of this. Had they known, they would have reviewed his licence. A TfL spokesman said they would have expected to learn of the conviction from the police or Uber.
In the case of 42-year-old Shahid Qureshi, he picked up a Japanese exchange student at Heathrow Airport on July 30 last year. While registered as a driver with Uber, on the day in question, he was working for another private cab firm.
The most popular question asked about Uber on social media is, why doesn't their driver look like his picture? - Steve McNamara
The married father-of-four insisted she sat in the front, then groped and kissed her. When she said: 'We don't do this in Japan,' he replied: 'This is England.' The driver continued to pester her for sex on messaging app WhatsApp after he dropped her off.
Reported to police, Qureshi was arrested. Detectives then found out he also worked for Uber and asked the company to reveal any other allegations against him.
It was only then that they learnt of an incident in September 2016, when Qureshi had put his hand on a female passenger's thigh.
The Uber spokesman initially accepted that they had received a complaint from the passenger, but that the driver touched her hand, not her thigh.
As a result, Qureshi was warned about his inappropriate behaviour. The spokesman added that, had they known the full story, 'it is very likely he would have been removed from the app'.
But, pushed for further details, Uber subsequently admitted that the report had related to Qureshi touching the woman's thigh, as well as her hand.
After details of this incident were revealed to police by Uber, Qureshi was arrested and charged with a second count of assault.
The Mail has also established that Qureshi had a previous conviction for harassment in 2011, when he kissed and grabbed a colleague while working as a healthcare professional.
This was flagged up to TfL when he applied for a licence in 2014. While he was warned about his future behaviour, the conviction was considered spent and he was granted the licence.
Qureshi, who has lived in Britain for 15 years, was convicted of two counts of sexual assault and jailed for 12 months.
Commenting on the two cases, Uber said: 'We welcome the convictions of these two drivers. Every driver who uses Uber in the UK has been licensed for private hire by a local authority, which includes going through an enhanced background check.
'Any previous offences would appear in those background checks as part of the licensing process and are only shown to the licensing authority. Every trip on our app is tracked by GPS and we have supported the police in helping to bring these two licensed drivers to justice.'
Siwan Hayward, TfL's head of transport policing, added: 'We take all allegations against licensed taxi and private hire drivers extremely seriously. As soon as we were made aware of these offences, we suspended the drivers' licences immediately.'
Reading the details of these cases, no doubt others will feel uncomfortable.
'For London parents, especially working ones, the appearance of Uber was like the arrival of Ocado — a habit so convenient that now it's difficult to ever imagine life without it,' one mother told the Mail.
'Nearly every parent I know who has teenage kids relies on Uber to ferry them back from fixtures and parties.'
Others said they felt Uber was a safe option as the app automatically tracks the vehicle's journey. But could this be giving people a false sense of security? 'People say that, with Uber, they know who is driving their child home,' says Steve McNamara. 'But the most popular question asked about Uber on social media is, why doesn't their driver look like his picture?'
Mr McNamara's theory is that a licensed driver may allow an acquaintance to drive when they have a day off.
Reservations have also been voiced by Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. Last year, he revealed that he would not let his two teenage daughters take a cab on their own.
'[They] haven't got an Uber app,' he said in a radio interview. 'We pick them up or drop them off
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