Judge dismisses prosecution of taxi company over cross-border bookings

A taxi firm did not break the law when an automated booking system allocated a customer enquiry in one local authority area to a cab owned by the same firm but licensed by a neighbouring council.

That was the conclusion of district judge Malcolm Dodds in a case brought by Milton Keynes Council at High Wycombe Magistrates Court.

Barristers from No5 Chambers, who represented both Skyline Taxis and its managing director Gavin Sokhi, said Milton Keynes had alleged that the iCabbi computerised system breached the law regarding subcontracting work to another licensed operator, although in this case the subcontract was to another part of Skyline licensed by neighbouring South Northamptonshire District Council.

Judge Dodds noted that the system has been operated for several years without such prosecutions and South Northamptonshire was content with its use.

Milton Keynes argued that the law required either human intervention in the booking system or a separate computerised systems in each licensing area.

The judge said there was no case to answer but even had it continued he would have been satisfied on the evidence that iCabbi and its operation by Skyline and Mr Sokhi was lawful.

In his judgment, which can be viewed here, Judge Dodds said it was now common to make commercial arrangements such as buying car insurance online without any human intervention and “applying what I consider to be a common sense approach I find that the iCabbi system does comply with the law”.

He assumed Parliament intended in the Deregulation Act to enable large companies to operate across local authority bodies using modern technology.

iCabbi was in widespread without prior complaint or prosecutions and “I therefore make a reasonable assumption that the system has been designed to be legally compliant, a view fortified by there being no evidence that any other local authority has found fault with the system in England and Wales in the last 19 months since deregulation”.

The judge added: “I can find no requirement in the legislation that each private taxi vehicle operator needs to have separate and identifiable computer systems to take bookings, transfer bookings and accept transferred bookings and that a cloud-based system to which a number of different operators have access does not meet the legal requirements in the 1976 Act.

“I therefore do not find that any reasonable court could convict on the prosecution evidence and find no case to answer and the offences are dismissed.”

Mark Smulian