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THE ROLE OF LICENSING: POLICY JUSTIFICATION
7. The aim of local authority licensing of the taxi and PHC trades is to protect the public and to help ensure that the public have reasonable access to taxi and PHC services, given the part they play in local transport provision.
8. Licensing requirements which are unduly stringent will tend unreasonably to restrict the supply of taxi and PHC services, by putting up the cost of operation or otherwise restricting entry to the trade. Local licensing authorities should recognise that too stringent an approach may not be in the public interest - and could, indeed, have safety implications.
9. For example, it is clearly important that somebody using a taxi or PHC to go home alone late at night should be confident that the driver does not have a serious criminal record and that the vehicle is safe. But on the other hand, if the supply of taxis or PHCs has been unduly constrained by onerous licensing conditions, then that person's safety might be put at risk by having to wait on late-night streets for a taxi or PHC to arrive; he or she might even be tempted to enter an unlicensed vehicle with an unlicensed driver illegally plying for hire.
10. Licensing authorities should, therefore, ensure that each of their various licensing requirements is properly justified in terms of the risk it aims to address; or, to put it another way, whether the cost of a requirement in terms of its effect on the availability of transport to the public is at least matched by the benefit to the public, for example through increased safety. This is not to propose that a detailed, quantitative, cost-benefit assessment should be made in each case; but that licensing authorities should look carefully at the costs - financial or otherwise - imposed by each of their licensing policies and consider whether they are commensurate with the benefits the policy is meant to achieve.
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