Lists of Accessible Taxis under S167 Equality Act 2010

The request was successful.

Dear Oxford City Council,

1) Please advise if you have produced, or currently intend to produce, a list of wheelchair accessible:
a) taxis
and
b) private hire vehicles
under the powers set out in S167 of the Equality Act 2010.

2) Please identify how many a) taxi and b) PHV drivers have applied for medical / physical impairment exemption under S166 of the Equality Act 2010 since S166 was commenced. If you've created a list under S167, please identify how many of the exemptions were in place before S167 and how many have been put in since.

3) Please state whether you voluntarily compiled a list of accessible taxis and private hire vehicles following the Department for Transport's guidance of 15th September 2010, which stated, in relation to section 167, “although the list of designated vehicles will have no actual effect in law until the duties are commenced, we would urge licensing authorities to start maintaining a list as soon as possible for the purpose of liaising with the trade and issuing exemption certificates”. If you did produce such a voluntary list, please indicate when you did so, and provide the current list.

If you have produced a list of wheelchair accessible taxis and/or private hire vehicles under S167, or are going to, please tell me the following.

4) The date the list was instated or by which you intend to do so.

5) The accessibility requirements of a taxi for it to appear on the list.

6) How you intend to enforce drivers' compliance with S165.

7) The list.

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Dear Doug,

Thank you for your email. You will receive a response within 20 working days from the date of your request, as required under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Yours sincerely

Merilyn

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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Dear DAVIES Merilyn,

Where is the response to my FOI request please? 20 working days have passed.

Yours sincerely,

Doug Paulley

DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Hello Doug,

Thank you for your email and I apologise for the delay in responding to you.

Oxford City Council is in the process of compiling a list of accessible taxis, which is will publish upon completion, on our website.

As it is the Council's intention to publish the information, I consider that the exemption under section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 applies. This is a qualified exemption - covering information intended for future publication - and as such, I have applied the public interest test. This test assesses the benefits of disclosure against the consequences of disclosure. I have concluded that because it is right for the Council to make its own arrangements for the publication of the information, the exemption should apply.

I can, however, tell you that all our licenced hackney carriages - totalling 107 - are all wheelchair accessible, so there will be a only be a small number of private hire vehicles to add to that number.

If you disagree with any part of the response to your request, you are entitled to ask the Council for an internal review of the decision(s) made. You may do this by writing to the Monitoring Officer, by either email – [email address] – or by post to Monitoring Officer, Oxford City Council, St Aldate’s Chambers, St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1DS. After the result of the internal review, if you remain dissatisfied, you may ask the Information Commissioner to intervene on your behalf. You may do this by writing to the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Your sincerely

Merilyn Davies

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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Dear Oxford City Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Oxford City Council's handling of my FOI request 'Lists of Accessible Taxis under S167 Equality Act 2010'.

You haven't responded to a lot of the elements of my request. These aren't caught by the "future publication" exemption.

I asked:

2) Please identify how many a) taxi and b) PHV drivers have applied for medical / physical impairment exemption under S166 of the Equality Act 2010 since S166 was commenced. If you've created a list under S167, please identify how many of the exemptions were in place before S167 and how many have been put in since.

3) Please state whether you voluntarily compiled a list of accessible taxis and private hire vehicles following the Department for Transport's guidance of 15th September 2010, which stated, in relation to section 167, “although the list of designated vehicles will have no actual effect in law until the duties are commenced, we would urge licensing authorities to start maintaining a list as soon as possible for the purpose of liaising with the trade and issuing exemption certificates”. If you did produce such a voluntary list, please indicate when you did so, and provide the current list.

If you are going to produce a list of wheelchair accessible taxis and/or private hire vehicles under S167 please tell me the following.

4) The date the list was instated or by which you intend to do so.

5) The accessibility requirements of a taxi for it to appear on the list.

6) How you intend to enforce drivers' compliance with S165.

Thank you

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

Dear Oxford City Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Oxford City Council's handling of my FOI request 'Lists of Accessible Taxis under S167 Equality Act 2010'.

You haven't responded to an element.

In response to my request:

"a list of wheelchair accessible:
a) taxis
and
b) private hire vehicles
under the powers set out in S167 of the Equality Act 2010."

You stated:

"At this current time there is not a list of wheelchair accessible vehicles, however all the hackney carriage fleet are WAVs and all these details are on the public register."

That doesn't provide the information I requested as to whether you intend to introduce a S167 list.

The DFT's statutory guidance has this to say about S167:

"Whilst LAs are under no specific legal obligation to maintain a list under section 167, the Government recommends strongly that they do so. Without such a list the requirements of section 165 of the Act do not apply, and drivers may continue to refuse the carriage of wheelchair users, fail to provide them with assistance, or to charge them extra."

As such, unless you go through the seemingly pointless bureaucratic exercise of producing a S167 list, your drivers won't be subject to the new obligations, irrespective of the fact that all your taxis are accessible. I therefore assume you are going to produce a list, and I'd be grateful if you could confirm this and answer questions 4-7.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/l...

Yours faithfully,

Doug Paulley

DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Hello Doug,

Thank you for your email. I'm afraid I'm a little confused. In my response I said we are compiling a list of taxis relating to S167 and that this list will be published. I couldn't find my reply where I said,

"At this current time there is not a list of wheelchair accessible vehicles, however all the hackney carriage fleet are WAVs and all these details are on the public register."

Could you direct me to this email, please?

Best wishes

Merilyn

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Dear Paul,

Please find below, the answers to your questions. I apologise for not seeing these when you initially emailed. Please do let me know if you would like to continue with the internal review and, if so, I will forward your request to the relevant officer.

2) Please identify how many a) taxi and b) PHV drivers have applied for medical / physical impairment exemption under S166 of the Equality Act 2010 since S166 was commenced. If you've created a list under S167, please identify how many of the exemptions were in place before S167 and how many have been put in since. – three exemptions for wheelchairs under S166. No list created for S167

3) Please state whether you voluntarily compiled a list of accessible taxis and private hire vehicles following the Department for Transport's guidance of 15th September 2010, which stated, in relation to section 167, “although the list of designated vehicles will have no actual effect in law until the duties are commenced, we would urge licensing authorities to start maintaining a list as soon as possible for the purpose of liaising with the trade and issuing exemption certificates”. If you did produce such a voluntary list, please indicate when you did so, and provide the current list. - No

If you are going to produce a list of wheelchair accessible taxis and/or private hire vehicles under S167 please tell me the following.

4) The date the list was instated or by which you intend to do so. – not known yet

5) The accessibility requirements of a taxi for it to appear on the list. – as per the guidance: to be placed on a licensing authority’s list a vehicle must be capable of carrying some – but not necessarily all – types of occupied wheelchairs. The Government therefore recommends that a vehicle should only be included in the authority’s list if it would be possible for the user of a “reference wheelchair” to enter, leave and travel in the passenger compartment in safety and reasonable comfort whilst seated in their wheelchair.

6) How you intend to enforce drivers' compliance with S165. – we will investigate all complaints regarding the discrimination of wheelchair passengers if they occur via our normal procedures

Best wishes

Merilyn

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Hi Doug,

Can you let me know if you now have the information you requested and whether you wish to proceed with the internal review?

Best wishes

Merilyn

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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Dear DAVIES Merilyn,

Hello

Apologies for not responding immediately; as you probably can gather, I'm co-ordinating FOI requests to all 348 taxi licencing bodies in England, Wales and Scotland.

Thank you; I have the information I need from Oxford City Council.

Yours sincerely,

Doug Paulley

DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Hi Doug,

Gosh, that's a big job! Will you be publishing it anywhere? It would be interesting to see the results,

Best wishes and good luck with your project,

Merilyn

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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Dear DAVIES Merilyn,

Thank you!

Yes, when I'm done it will be published. It will be on my blog, https://www.kingqueen.org.uk, and if I can interest John Pring, it will also be on http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com . He's already done an initial article at http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/set... .

The working spreadsheet is available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/thbkg2irmauqz3...

Thanks

Yours sincerely,

Doug Paulley

DAVIES Merilyn, Oxford City Council

Brilliant, thank you! I will pass this to our licensing team as I'm sure they will be interested

Merilyn Davies | Freedom of Information and Complaints Officer| Chief Executive’s Office | Oxford City Council – Normal working hours Monday to Friday 09:30 – 14:30

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