Bolton: MLS taxi scheme scrutinised at council meeting

The Minimum Standards Licensing scheme is set to come into effect across all of Greater Manchester by the end of the decade.

But in Bolton the proposal has been called in for further scrutiny after some of the borough’s drivers raised fears that their livelihoods could be impacted.

Cllr Paul Heslop, of One Kearsley, said: “This is a classic case, as with the Clean Air Zone, of not listening to the people and to the people it is going to affect.

“And when the people sometimes give the politicians a bloody nose its welcome because we need to listen to the people.”

He added: “It is a mess in Greater Manchester, and we will be sending a very clear message that we don’t want anything to do it.”

The MLS scheme was debated at Bolton town hall again this week (Image: Newsquest)

The MLS scheme was agreed on collectively by the city region’s ten councils in 2018 and was designed to bring in a set of common standards for the 11,500 private hire vehicles across Greater Manchester.

Taxis will also be required to comply with European standards when first licences, aiming for a zero-carbon emission fleet, by the same date, while a they will also be marked with a common livery.

But one of the most contentious aspects of this has been requirements that vehicles would have to be less than five years old on first registration and have been on the road for less than 10 years to avoid a charge.

Bolton Council has since won concessions, including that there be no maximum age for vehicles already “on to fleet” and that common liveries will not need to include Greater Manchester logo stickers.

But continuing objections over vehicle age standards in particular led opposition councillors to call the decision in for further scrutiny at a Bolton Council cabinet meeting at the end of last month.

This has now been discussed further at the authority’s place scrutiny committee earlier this week.

Labour's Cllr Mohammed Ayub said: “This is a matter of the livelihood of drivers and the safety of the public, so this needs to be sorted.”

But the council’s leadership has long made the point that they have already won concessions from Greater Manchester and have warned that not signing up to the scheme could entail a loss of funding.

Speaking at the place scrutiny committee meeting, Conservative deputy leader Cllr Hilary Fairclough pointed out that the policy had originally been a Labour policy.

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She said that since the Conservative Party came to office in Bolton, her party had tried to work with the opposition and with the taxi trade to try and agree on the best way forward.

She said: “It originally started in 2018 when a Labour Mayor wanted to have minimum standards and the ten then Labour authorities.”

She added: “We went out and we got what we believed was the best deal for Bolton, no one else got the same.”

The decision will now be referred back to Bolton Council’s cabinet.