{"id":390093,"date":"2025-09-01T20:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T20:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/390093\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T20:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T20:22:11","slug":"taxi-fares-set-to-rise-as-fouling-charge-increased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/390093\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxi fares set to rise as ‘fouling’ charge increased"},"content":{"rendered":"

The increase in taxi fares is said to be driven by the rise in operating costs over the last two years\"TaxiTaxi fares in Sefton are set to increase(Image: REACH PLC)<\/p>\n

People can expect to pay more to get around in black cabs in one part of Merseyside as maximum tariffs are set to rise.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to a Sefton Council report presented at a Licensing Committee <\/a>this evening (September 1), the Hackney Carriage Trade (HCT) has made a series of requests including the introduction of a new tariff 3 covering Friday and Saturday evenings (midnight to 6am). The HCT also asked councillors to approve a change to the applicable time for charging tariff 2 from 11pm-6am to 9pm-6am.<\/p>\n

Sefton<\/a> Council is responsible for setting the maximum hackney carriage fares a driver can charge. The council report includes a breakdown of maximum tariff charges suggested for 2025 and beyond and are calculated using both time spent in the taxi and the distance covered.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sefton has the lowest hackney carriage fares locally and is currently in the lower quartile of fares charged nationally. The last tariff increase was introduced on October 11, 2023, but councillors have now approved the following increases:<\/p>\n

Tariff 1 \u2013 \u00a33.20 (currently \u00a32.90)Tariff 2 \u2013 \u00a34.00 (currently \u00a33.60)Tariff 3 \u2013 \u00a34.40 (new weekend tariff)Tariff 4 \u2013 \u00a34.80 (currently \u00a34.10 as tariff 3)<\/p>\n

It is hoped the revised tariffs will maintain the current number of vehicles available as well as retaining and attracting new drivers and owners.<\/p>\n

The council currently licence 271 Hackney Carriage vehicles with 58 vehicle licences \u2018on hold\u2019 and therefore not operational with 250 Hackney carriage drivers.<\/p>\n

Mark Toohey, the principal licensing officer for Sefton Council, presented the report, he said the borough currently has the lowest number of taxi drivers it its history.<\/p>\n

Mr Toohey added: \u201cWe currently have a fixed amount of Hackneys of 271. 58 of those vehicles are on hold, so we\u2019ve only got 213 Hackney carriages on our roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow the vast majority of the wheelchair accessible fleet comes from the Hackney carriage trade. We\u2019ve currently got 112 wheelchair accessible vehicles as part of that fleet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trade have reported that they just can\u2019t get the drivers. They\u2019re not making enough money and they feel like our tarrifs were lagging behind the changes made by Liverpool city council and Wirral<\/a> in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

The HCT also submitted three additional requests including an increase to the maximum \u2018fouling\u2019 charge \u2013 from \u00a340 to \u00a350 \u2013 and an update to the starting fares for each tariff.<\/p>\n

Additionally, elected members also approved the introduction of \u2018calendar controlled meters\u2019 which allow for tariff programming with automatic switching between the tariffs to ensure the correct charges are applied at all times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The increase in taxi fares is said to be driven by the rise in operating costs over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,12459,12460,20145,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-390093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-sefton","13":"tag-sefton-council","14":"tag-taxis","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115130908521686751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}