Bolton: Council leadership withdraw support for MLS taxi scheme

After months of debate, the leadership of Bolton Council have announced they are not supporting “Minimum Licencing Standards 2” - a policy which originally would have charged drivers for having vehicles that were more than 10 years old.

The plan had been fiercely contested by drivers across the borough, who warned it could “destroy livelihoods”, and town hall leaders have now announced a change in policy.

Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “We have decided that we are not going to continue pursuing MLS 2.”

He added: “We need to make one thing absolutely clear, the previous Conservative council had years to sort this out.

Taxi drivers have long expressed unease with the scheme (Image: Newsquest)

“The last decision on this matter was that there would be a maximum age limit on private hire vehicles of 10 years, they all voted for that.”

“Labour inherited this mess, we have sorted it out.

“This is entirely a decision of the Labour council.”

The MLS scheme was first agreed on collectively by Greater Manchester’s 10 councils in 2018 and was designed to bring in a set of common standards for the 11,500 private hire vehicles across city region.

Under its previous administration, Bolton Council agreed to the first stage of the MLS proposals which were approved back in September 2021.

Speaking at a debate on the subject last May, Conservative deputy leader Cllr Hilary Fairclough said they had secured better terms for Bolton drivers than those in other boroughs.

She said: “It originally started in 2018 when a Labour Mayor wanted to have minimum standards and the 10 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.”

But Conservatives announced earlier in July that they now favoured scrapping the scheme.

Since it was first discussed, drivers across Bolton had made their fears known about the scheme, which would have demanded that taxi vehicles be no more than five years old on first registration and have been on the road for less than 10 years to avoid a charge.

They had warned this could have driven them off the road while they also raised concerns that a common livery policy may have made them a bigger target for vandals.

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Just last month Bolton Council’s leadership had announced changes to the policy aimed at meeting these concerns.

This included removing the age policy, ensuring that there would be no Greater Manchester wide common livery and pushing back the new emissions policy from 2028 to 2030.

But the Bolton Private Hire Association has continued to fiercely oppose the scheme, demanding instead that it be scrapped in its entirety, claiming that neither Labour nor Conservative administrations had been listening to them.

Now, following meetings between representatives of the taxi trade with Cllr Peel alongside deputy leader Cllr Akhtar Zaman and cabinet member for regulatory services and property Cllr Sue Haworth, the council leadership has withdrawn support for MLS2.

Council leaders now expect that the status quo will be maintained.

Bolton Private Hire Association Secretary Yasif Khan said: “We are very happy with the decision and we would like to thank the administration for realising it would have been really harsh on the drivers.

“From day one we were telling them it wasn’t affordable for the drivers, it would have been very difficult to get finance on new cars and it would have been very difficult with the second hand market as well.”

He added: “If its not broken, don’t fix it, as we’ve always said we already do two MOTs.

“There has never been any issue with safety and the safety of our passengers is always paramount.”

His collegue, Vice Chair Mohammed Akhtar added that he hoped that drivers could now come together with the council and the public to find the best way forward.