Public addresses relating to matters of business for this agenda, up to five minutes is available for each public address.

The request to speak accompanied by the full text of the address must be received by the Director of Law, Governance and Strategy by 5.00 pm on Thursday the 13^th of November.

Cabinet received one address from a member of the public.

Address from Bashir Ahmed to Cabinet.

Delay to the emissions standard policy

When the Oxford taxi trade was presented with the proposals on 10th January 2019 to change from diesel taxis to electric taxis, 6 years seemed a reasonable time for the transition but unfortunately then came COVID-19. The Taxi trade lost four years because of the coronavirus

Along came the new trend of people working from home which has continued as people are still working from home

To make matters worse the closure of Botley Road.

We have lost all our work to Botley and beyond. There is no guarantee when the Botley Road will reopen. As if this wasn’t bad enough, last summer the summer of 2024, the nightclubs in Oxford permanently shut their doors and closed down. There are no night revellers during the week nor the weekends. The city centre has become a ghost town.

With licensing of Uber in Oxford in December 2024

We have witnessed private hires from Southampton, Portsmouth, Wolverhampton and further away operating in Oxford.

Uber is a £53 billion international company. It’s subsidises fares during the promotional periods which no other private hire operator or the Hackney carriage trade can match. But once established, they have peak and off-peak crazy prices.

LEVC cost

The price of the electric taxi has gone up again. Now from £75,000-£82,000, that is if bought on cash, but on interest it is £105,000. It’s a lot of money.

The 40 Proprietor is in Oxford who have changed to electric taxis, most of them but not all of them took advantage of the £7000 government grant which at that time reduced the price of the electric taxi down to £55,000 cash price and of course, the price of the new electric taxi was significantly less then to what it is now.

£5000 local council grant was also granted to drivers who had purchased the electric taxi. This also included three years of Taxi License fee relief. Plus the cheaper electricity making it a very viable package to run the electric taxi.

But in current times, the cost of electric to charge the electric taxi has gone up from 18p per kw/h to 74p per kw/h. And the grants are no longer available from our council and the government has reduced its plug in grant if purchasing a new taxi.

Zero emissions zone and other licensing authorities giving extension to their licence holder to change to more greener vehicles

Initially the expanded ZEZ in oxford was planned for 2025, but it has now been delayed. We have been informed that the implementation will not take place until at least 2028, following a public consultation.

Given the new timeline, we think it’s very reasonable that we are given more time so we can prepare for this better.

Other licensing authorities have their own strategies for tackling high levels of emissions. Given the difficult financial climate that taxi drivers are facing across the country, various licensing authorities have granted extra time for drivers to switch their vehicles to low emission or zero emission ones. This is a significant consideration.

Such authorities are:

1) south Cambridgeshire who are expected to give their drivers to 2030 to change over.

2) Coventry licensing authority are seriously considering pushing back their policy to 2030

3) Both Rochdale and Manchester strategies are matched and delayed their emission standards till 2030

4) Reading’s policy has set a target of 2028 where all vehicles must be a minimum of ULEZ.

Conclusion

We have demonstrated our intent that we want to work with the city council and 40% of our proprietors have changed over to the electric taxis.

Any concerns about air pollution in the city is more than mitigated in the context of the introduction of 159 electric buses on the city bus routes in 2024 as well as 40 new London style taxis. We are doing our bit for the environment.

We would like to thank the city council but feel that additional latitude is required for the transition given all of the circumstances explained.

Councillor Brown explained the legal advice that Cabinet had received, which caused this decision to move from the Licensing Committee to Cabinet. She said that in future, they would take these types of decisions at Licensing Committee, following changes to the constitution to allow this later in the month.

Councillor Railton provided Cabinet’s response to the address from the member of the public.

Councillor Railton noted that they would address the key concerns of the member of the public in their discussion of the report.