R v Blackpool Borough Council, ex parte Red Cab Taxis Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 29 April 1994 |
| Date | 29 April 1994 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Queen's Bench Division
Before Mr Justice Judge
Licensing - statutory right of appeal - unreasonable condition
Although a local authority had wrongly imposed an unreasonable condition on a licence issued to private hire cars, judicial review would not be granted as the aggrieved parties could seek rectification by statutory right of appeal.
Mr Justice Judge so stated in the Queen's Bench Division in dismissing an application for judicial review by Red Cab Taxis Ltd, five other taxi companies and three individual taxi operators, of a decision of Blackpool Borough Council on November 9, 1993 to attach to the grant of a private hire licence a condition which precluded an operator, proprietor or driver holding such a licence from permitting a private hire vehicle to stand at any public place other than in connection with a pre-arranged booking.
Mr Philip Engelman for the applicants; Mr Timothy Straker for Blackpool.
MR JUSTICE JUDGE said that the council had sought to resolve by consultation long standing differences between operators of hackney cabs and private hire vehicles.
Without warning, however, on receipt of complaints from the former group, it had introduced a new condition which, at its lowest, created the impression that the private hire cars were disadvantaged if not in fact so. That process was flawed.
Moreover, the condition itself lacked clarity and was obscure enough so as to be read as precluding private hire cars from standing at a public place on which they had a right to go or where they had a contractual obligation to go.
The local authority had power under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 to grant licences subject to conditions where reasonably necessary. A condition whose objective was to hinder or prevent private hire cars from plying for hire at some sort of taxi...
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R Singh v Cardiff City Council
...51 That well-known principle was applied in a context similar to the present in R v Blackpool Borough Council, ex p Red Cab Taxis Ltd [1994] RTR 402, a judgment of Judge J (as he then was). In support of that submission it has been observed on behalf of the defendant that there is a well-kn......