Agenda item

To consider a report seeking approval of a revised Licensed Driver Convictions Policy.

The Committee considered a report setting out an updated version of the Convictions Policy for Licensed Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Drivers and Private Hire Operators.

It was reported that the Council had adopted its original Convictions Policy for Licensed Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Drivers and Private Hire Operators on 28^th June 2018 as part of a Surrey wide initiative.  The Policy had subsequently been reviewed and updated to remove a small number of legal ambiguities and the revised policy was then subjected to a six week consultation period with statutory organisations, the public and the licensed trade.  A total of 393 responses had been received as a result of the consultation and the responses had been incorporated into the revised policy.

Arising from Members’ questions and comments the following points were noted:

·         Paragraph 1.8 of the revised policy would be amended to remove the superfluous a from the bracketed sentence.

·         Paragraph 6.2 It was clarified that that convictions for malicious wounding where there was no evidence of racial aggravation was included in the list of convictions that would prevent a licence being granted until at least ten years had elapsed since the conviction.

·         The revised policy would be adopted by all Surrey authorities.

RESOLVED that the revised Convictions Policy for Licensed Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Drivers and Private Hire Operators, attached as Annex 3 of the Report, be adopted by the Council.