A new rule on making taxis in South Gloucestershire accessible to people in wheelchairs has been delayed because of “recent global events”. The rule was scheduled to come into force next month, but has been paused due to climate change, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
In a bid to make travelling easier for disabled people, South Gloucestershire Council decided in 2017 to encourage hackney carriage taxis to switch to wheelchair-accessible vehicles. A hard deadline for all hackney carriages to be wheelchair-accessible was set for April 1 this year.
But taxi drivers have urged the council to delay the rollout of the new rule. The council is also considering a separate rule forcing all taxis to be electric by 2030, and electric wheelchair-accessible taxis are currently “prohibitively expensive”.
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Drivers also said the pandemic meant a huge drop in trade, and the war in Ukraine had disrupted global supply chains, delaying the manufacturing and supply of new vehicles. The council’s regulatory committee voted to delay the launch of the new rule on Thursday, March 23.
A report to the committee said: “This is not an attempt by hackney carriage vehicle licence holders and drivers to avoid the policy, and they understand why it is happening. The drivers are seeking a greater degree of sympathy from the committee, to give them the chance to adjust to the change given the wider circumstances.”
The policy has already made some progress in increasing the numbers of taxis in South Gloucestershire which passengers in wheelchairs can use. According to the report, in 2016 there were 31 wheelchair-accessible taxis, and now there are 37.
But drivers have to wait a year or 18 months to be able to buy a new wheelchair-accessible taxi, according to councillors, who warned that enforcing the policy from next month could mean drivers would be “out of work” — despite the trade having six years of notice about the new policy.
Conservative Councillor Keith Burchell, representing Severn Vale, said: “This has been going on for a long time but unfortunately due to the events of the last three or four years, we have to do something now just to alleviate the situation, because the situation has changed since this was first recommended.
“If the events of the past three or four years hadn’t happened, there would be no way I would be recommending this [delay] today. But the vehicles aren’t available for the trade to get. They’ll have to wait a year or 18 months to get a vehicle. That means a taxi driver, if we implement this, could be out of work for a year or 18 months as they haven’t got a vehicle.”
