Further steps taken as investigations continue into Uber drivers 'touting for business' at Gatwick

The situation was raised during a meeting of Crawley Borough Council’s licensing committee on Tuesday (June 18).

Officers are already carrying out an investigation into claims that licensing rules are being breached to the detriment of local drivers.

But committee members voted unanimously to take further steps.

While officers were asked to complete the investigation ‘as speedily as possible’, chairman Imran Ashraf (Langley Green & Tushmore) agreed to put pen to paper, sharing the committee’s concerns.

He will write to Gatwick Airport Ltd asking the company to engage with licensing officers to ensure provision for licensed vehicles at the airport is compliant with licensing law.

He will also ask Transport for London to carry out enforcement visits frequently and/or authorise the council’s licensing officers to act on their behalf.

And he will write to the Department for Transport expressing concern that the current licensing regime makes it increasingly difficult to address breaches, and asking for the law to be looked at again.

Gatwick taxi drivers gathered in numbers outside the town hall before some moved inside to watch the meeting.

Safety and the financial cost of losing business to Uber were their top concerns.

Don Barnes, Unite branch secretary, who works for Airport Cars, said Uber cars were parking up in the Authorised Vehicle Area, coming and going at the rate of one a minute while the drivers licensed for the airport were ‘sitting in the crew room for two hours before they get a job’.

Calling for Uber to be geo-fenced from both Gatwick and Crawley, he said: “Gatwick is not in London – Gatwick is in Sussex. Uber are not part of Sussex – Uber should be removed. Simple as that.

“They are breaking law, they must be held accountable.”

Nick Venes, a licensed driver and Unite representative, speaking for 315 drivers at Gatwick, called for protection from the council as licensing authority.

To applause from other drivers, he said: “We pay nearly half a million pounds to be not protected – we are not protected at all. Why is that? Are we just a cash cow?

“We need help. We need people that are going to be in that licensing department actually for us, not against us.

“You should be here helping the licensed drivers. That is not happening.”

The meeting was attended by MP hopefuls Peter Lamb (Lab, Northgate & West Green) and Zack Ali (Con, West Sussex County Council).

Mr Lamb said the national licensing system was ‘fundamentally broken’ and was getting ‘harder and harder to enforce’.

He added that until any changes came into effect, the council had ‘a duty, not just to [drivers] but to the public at large, to ensure that licensing rules are enforced for their safety and for the safe operation of the trade within Crawley’.

Mr Ali said: “When we have a company operating here and drivers which are not licensed in Crawley, a company not permitted to work in Crawley, freely working day in day out – hundreds of Uber drivers picking up jobs over here – we need to take action and we need to take that action now rather than later.”