Following a lengthy public consultation exercise, the PCO has decreed that sGs, a private company, will administer the licensing process and undertake the vehicle inspections of all London taxi cabs from 2 april this year. the PCO yard will close its gates to cabs from the 28 March and the function of the feared Penton street inspection ramps will be transferred to three new testing centres at Tottenham, Deptford and Hanworth. SGS is a multi-national Swiss based organization and a world leader in vehicle assessment and equipment calibration. The Company employs a workforce of 30,000 dispersed over 140 countries and currently operates the franchise for the Republic of Ireland’s equivalent of the UK’s Mot test. Computerized assessment It Is 12 months since the PCO first aired the likelihood of SGS being awarded the lucrative London contract, and during that period taxi trade representatives have been afforded the opportunity to meet with SGS management and inspect the Company’s testing facilities. The move to SGS has been broadly welcomed by the majority of trade organizations. It is expected that the state-of the- art streamlined testing process, which includes a 70% computerized assessment, will deliver a fairer result than the ‘personal service’ currently provided by a selection of PCO brown coats. The system will automatically issue a computerized printout detailing reasons for failure which will form a clear basis for the required remedial attention prior to re-presentation. New safety check unfortunately, the transfer to sGs has been soured by the PCO insistence on the introduction of a six-monthly ‘safety check’ which it is being proposed will commence in October this year. The new check will effectively replace the existing system of PCO street stops, home visits and garage checks; although it is expected that a limited number of ad hoc inspections may still occur. High failure rate the PCO justify as the need for the mid-year inspection by the fact that private hire vehicles (PhVs), which are currently inspected annually by sGs, will almost certainly be required to undertake a similar inspection to replace the six-monthly Mot which they are currently required to undergo. But the main basis for the introduction of the new test is the PCO claim that the current failure rates for cabs presented for licensing is unacceptably high. The PCO justifies this assertion by quoting inspection records from year 2000 to date, which the PCO management claim highlights deterioration in the standard of vehicles presented for passing. Flawed claim? Taxi Garage proprietors and long established taxi repairers believe this PCO claim to be fundamentally fl awed and base their criticism on technical and subjective grounds. For example, they allege that a fundamental anomaly regularly occurs in relation to the PCO protocol for examining steering boxes. The majority of PCO examiners will automatically fail a weeping steering box, but it is claimed that this is not the case with Government approved Mot test centres. Interestingly, I have been informed by a sGs vehicle inspector that generally speaking sGs will also pass a steering box in that condition. The trades’ subjective arguments are based on the wide disparity of failure rates which it is alleged, exist amongst PCO examiners. In other words, it is not a question of how good your cab is but more a matter of whether one of the ‘wrong-urns’ tests it. Repeated requests In order to substantiate or negate these allegations, I have made repeated requests to the PCO to provide full details of individual examiner failure rates from year 2000 to date. This period is fundamental because it corresponds exactly with the statistics relied upon by senior PCO off coals to justify their call for a six-monthly test? The tell Board was due to meet on Wednesday 7 February to consider the Pico’s recommendation for the introduction of the six-monthly test. My request for information was submitted on the 13 December 2006 as part of the Leda’s response to the off coal consultation process. I assumed that the information would be forthcoming in good time to allow the trade to prepare a case, if it was considered necessary to lobby tell board members. In the event, my request was vigorously resisted and a partial reply was received less than 24 hours before the board meeting deadline. It was clear from the limited information supplied that a signify cant disparity does exist amongst vehicle examiners, with failure rates varying between 6% and 58%. Last minute lobby this Revelation was received too late for trade representatives to prepare a substantive case to lay before the Board, and we were forced to mount a last-minute lobby at City hall on the morning of 7 February as tell members arrived to attend the board meeting. The Board did approve the PCO proposal for the new test but no if ram start date was if axed. The PCO currently intend to introduce the additional test in October this year. The leading trade organizations are requesting that the more common sense and prudent approach would be to allow the new sGs testing system to settle down for 12 months before making an if nil decision. Good news the PCO has, following years of lobbying by LTDA and T&GWU, reluctantly agreed to relax its insistence on re-testing used cabs. When a cab is sold, the existing licence can now be transferred to the new approved owner without the requirement for an additional overhaul. This good news was long overdue.