Bedford taxis and buses "too polluting" to be used anywhere else, meeting told

Bedford borough has polluting taxis and buses that can’t be used elsewhere as other areas have higher vehicle emissions standards, a meeting heard.

Chris Endacott, an associate consultant, told the General Licensing Committee (Thursday, April 24) he had been tasked by TAS Partnership to look into the environmental impact of the current taxi and private hire fleet in Bedford borough.

The research was commissioned by the council.

“Seventy three per cent of the National Fleet [all vehicles on the road] meets the clean air zone standard, it’s pushing 95 per cent in Greater London,” he said.

“[Bedford’s] private hire fleet is almost there at 62 per cent. But the hackney cab fleet [taxis] is a long way behind.

“And I think there may well be an issue here with Bedford being the receiving ground for vehicles that are not eligible for use as hackney cabs elsewhere in the country.

“We see this with buses, where local authorities set minimum standards and the bus operators buy the new vehicles in the areas where the minimum standards are.

“The old vehicles get shuffled on to somewhere that doesn’t have those standards.

“I think you can see a similar sort of effect happening here,” he said.

“You could not operate these taxis in many parts of the country, but you can in Bedford.

“But I think it would be fair to say that based on the data that’s been published by the Department for Transport you would seem to have less stringent standards than most of your comparator authorities,” he said.

Mr Endacott said many other authorities use Euro exhaust emission standards, and some have standards around age.

“My personal preference is that the standard is linked to the emissions standard of the vehicle so the euro standard rather than the age, because that’s the thing that defines what’s coming out the exhaust, not how old the vehicle is, But age can be a sort of substitute for that,” he said.

Mr Endacott added that any measures introduced by the council to increase the standards would need to take into account the fleet’s average churn of vehicles each year.

“So with about 600 vehicles in the fleet, I would expect, on average, the whole fleet to transition over a period of about six years,” he said.

“Both [the borough’s] private hire and hackney cab fleets are older and potentially more polluting therefore than the other East of England fleets.

“The hackney cab fleet is probably the one that is of most concern, and it’s not shown a significant improvement over the four years that we’ve been studying this’

“It is very old and it meets what I would regard as almost obsolete emissions standards.

“Standards that date back to the early part of this century.”

A Bedford Borough Council spokesperson said: “The research which was heard by the committee was commissioned by the council, so that we could investigate opportunities to encourage the use of lower emission vehicles.

“We will now consult with the taxi and private hire trade to identify how emission from the fleet might be reduced, whilst ensuring that the trade continues to be sustainable and affordable to residents.

“Our most recent Air Quality Annual Status Report found that air quality in Bedford borough is mostly very good, although there are locations where pollutants build up and are slow to disperse, whilst air quality has improved significantly in recent decades.”