Night Time Compliance Team To Be Doubled...Statement from LTPH

Transport for London (TfL) has today (Tuesday 14 February) confirmed that the dedicated London Taxi and Private Hire Compliance Night Team will more than double in size to meet the increasing demands of dealing with the effects of the night time economy. A further nine dedicated night time compliance officers will be recruited, increasing the size of the team to 16 members of staff.

Dedicated night teams

The night compliance team focuses on ensuring that taxi and private hire licensees work within conditions of their licence. This includes ensuring that private hire operators, particularly those licensed within a venue, are taking bookings correctly and keeping accurate records. The team also works closely with the police to tackle illegal touting.


The team are deployed across London every night of the week, with a particular focus on weekends, to compliment the activity undertaken by the regular compliance team. The night team work with an emphasis on intelligence-led activity in response to specific concerns from the taxi and private hire trades.


As well as ensuring that operators are working legally, the compliance team conduct on-street vehicle and driver checks, taxi rank inspections and participate in multi-agency operations in support of TfL’s Safer Travel team.


Helen Chapman, Deputy Director of London Taxi and Private Hire, said: “I have recently assumed temporary responsibility for the compliance team and am delighted to have secured further resources to bolster this team. They do an excellent job and are out there every night to check that licensees, particularly operators within venues, are playing by the rules, working with other agencies to tackle touting and ensuring that drivers and vehicles are safe to carry passengers.”


John Mason, Director of London Taxi and Private Hire, said: “Introducing a permanent dedicated night team in May 2011 has proven very successful. However it quickly became clear that further resources were needed to carry out this important work. When we are ready to recruit a new Head of Compliance I feel satisfied that they will be able to join an already established team all working in the same direction and with the right tools to do the job”.


Editorial Comment
Whilst we would applaud any increase in on street manpower in respect of compliance, in our opinion, a night-time staff of 16 is still woefully inadequate to deal with such a massive problem.


Night after night, all we see are teams that turn up to do badge and bill checks!
While besides the rank, touts are left to illegally ply for hire and tout openly. This problem has to be addressed


Also, Helen Chapman states that compliance teams are out there every night... This is not the case!
Compliance officers do not work Sunday or Monday nights...


John Mason, Director of London Taxi and Private Hire, said: “Introducing a permanent dedicated night team in May 2011 has proven very successful"


Really John, you think the last two Yeats have been successful?
Over 300 serious sexual assaults including rape, lines of illegal touts outside every night venue PH numbers escalating out of control, 7 demos from the licensed Taxi trade, failure to revoke licenses of operators breaking the law, rebellion of LTPH staff etc etc....


That's success John?

And this one wasn't wearing his badge John