From Ken Hudson.
I READ with interest the recent article regarding the JCRA and its investigation into the pricing structure of private-hire taxi companies in the Island.

For a competition regulator, the sight of local taxis driving around with the words ‘regulated’ and ‘controlled’ printed on their roof-top taxi signs must have been too much to resist. However, the JCRA investigation was obviously very much an office-bound affair, as it is clear that the investigation never looked properly at how taxi fares are determined.

It has been shown historically that to protect the paying public, some form of regulation is required within the industry, whether by self-regulation or by town councils or, in the case of local rank taxis, by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Department.

To assist in that regulation, meters are fitted and calibrated to a measured distance with specified tariff information injected into the meter. This enables the public to have some degree of comfort that the price being charged is uniform throughout the industry, albeit with a slight difference between the two types of taxis operating in Jersey – that is, private hire and rank taxis. I shall leave it to the reader to work out which is a controlled taxi and which is a regulated taxi.

For the JCRA to threaten prosecution because of the way private hire companies organise self-regulation is quite bizarre and goes against the industry norm even within the UK.

I disagree with the idea that deregulation will bring taxis fares down. On the contrary, within hours of this deregulation we have seen a company introduce a new tariff for Sundays and introduce a difference in how the meters behave to distance travelled and price charged.

What the JCRA have encouraged is a free-for-all and, not unnaturally, without having to conform to a controlled tariff, operators can in effect charge what they like. And since tariffs are now an unknown quantity, the customer will not know what the fare is until asked to pay for it.

The States of Jersey have introduced a competition law and no one should be above that law. However, it would perhaps have made more sense for the JCRA to have broadened their investigations and concluded that the way forward would have been to invite the private-hire companies to apply for an exemption allowed within the law to protect the public from operators willing to exploit the situation which their eagerness to deregulate prices has already created.
Cedar Lodge,
Grande Route des Sablons, Grouville.