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Coverage
and turnover…Our
work at the moment is extremely rampant
and quite honestly, I have never
experienced anything like this in the
past! You all know that as a company, we
have been extremely successful in
obtaining new accounts over the recent
past, which in turn cements our
reputation as being the busiest radio
circuit in London.
At the time of writing, our turnover has increased by more than £4m
over the corresponding period last year
and I am extremely optimistic that this
figure will rise in excess of £5m by the
year’s end.
That represents the upside. The downside is that some of you are
not covering as much account work as you
should or could! The problem I now face
is having staff within Brunswick House
who have to placate our customers,
leaving our staff that helped to win and
set up these accounts feeling totally
demoralised, because they feel that
members do not appreciate the work that
is put in at this end to win and
maintain new accounts. There is no
question that this organisation is the
‘Chelsea’ of the cab trade; we lead the
way with the technology we supply to our
clients, while our competitors just
follow in an endeavour to play catch up!
I
remember writing three or four years ago
in my End of Year Report at a
time when there was a downturn in trade,
how Dial-a-Cab would continue with its
Research and Development (R and D) so
that we would come out of the downturn
with our competitors endeavouring to
play catch up and that is exactly what
has happened! We are far in advance of
our competitors, however, the problem is
that some of our members have taken this
for granted and assume that the trend
will automatically continue. That is not
the case, because even with our
abundance of ‘goodies’ that your clients
require, if we cannot put a taxi outside
the door when they require one, then all
the hard work that has gone into this
Society would have been to no avail.
The problem is that some of you have become complacent and expect
the BoM and staff to win and retain
accounts and that you can just cover
that account work if you ‘fancy it’.
Allan Evans has written a piece in this
issue of Call Sign
regarding coverage on the Island and
elsewhere, which is pretty self
explanatory and you will see that the
efforts of some DaC drivers is nothing
short of derisory – 39 rejects from the
Island to W11, 28 rejects to SW5 – why
is that?
In a nutshell, we can do our job at this end, but some of you are
not punching your weight, which you can
only do by covering enough account work.
It is a sad fact - but a fact none the
less - cover the work |
or lose it! To try and
alleviate the situation regarding
coverage, we are fitting and training as
many vehicles and drivers as we possibly
can, this will continue through August
in a month that is normally dormant. But
the failure by some of you to cover
enough work has forced our hand and left
us no choice but for the BoM to increase
the size of the fleet in an effort to
try and service our success.
We have many drivers who do more than their share in order to help cover
the work that others are leaving for the
sake of earning a quick pound from
street work, but they can only do so
much and it isn’t fair that they should
have the added pressure on them put
there by those who seem not to care –
until it becomes quiet and then they
suddenly remember the radio…
PCO,
yellow badge drivers and radio circuits…
You are probably all aware that I have
regular meetings with the PCO and my
last meeting was particularly pertinent
to the above topic (coverage and
turnover). For the fourth
consecutive year, the number of licensed
Green badge drivers in London has
fallen. We now have less drivers than we
had in 2003 and at a time when
London is extremely buoyant and getting
even busier - especially with the run up
to the 2012 Olympics.
I have no specific comment to make on the above as you are all
capable of making your own minds up, but
I am extremely concerned that we will
not be giving the public the service
they require and the authorities will
have to step in and ‘change the rules’.
If so, it will undoubtedly be to the
detriment of our industry.
To prove a point, it has
now been decided that in future any of
the three licensed radio taxi circuits
in London can despatch any of their work
to suburban yellow badge drivers
providing the radio circuit concerned
also registers with the PCO as a Private
Hire operator!
Yes, you did read that correctly, but I will still elaborate.
In the past, some radio circuits in
London have used their suburban yellow
badge fleet to service the |
Island,
however, the yellow badge concerned had
to be in his/her sector when
he/she accepted the trip. What the PCO
is now saying is that the driver does
not have to be in his/her sector when
taking a job – they can be anywhere,
accept the trip and go anywhere, so long
as the radio circuit that gave him the
job has registered as a Private Hire
company as well as a Radio Taxi
organisation! Consequently, a yellow
badge driver from, say Romford, can
accept a trip from Berkeley Square to
Chiswick and then accept a trip from
Chiswick that goes to Hampstead and it
will all be legal and above board.
The PCO’s argument is quite simple; if a Private Hire driver can
pick up anywhere on the radio and go
anywhere, why shouldn’t a yellow badge
driver? Because if he took the hiring
off the radio then it is a private
hiring – logical?
Now I know some of you are going to put our coverage on the Island and
the above topic together and think there
is some sort of ulterior motive – there
isn’t. I was just endeavouring to
emphasise the point that the authorities
can and will move the goalposts in an
endeavour to provide the public with a
service. Exactly the same will happen
when the London taxi fleet is not large
enough to service the public! Yellow
badges picking up in town and minicabs
ranking in Kingston and both legal? It
can never happen? Well it already has!
DaC’s new building
Just to keep you all informed regarding
our new building. As you know, we take
possession on 1 October and we are
currently in the process of hiring an
independent Project Manager to oversee
the whole scenario from refurbishment to
the move. When we have decided on the
Project Manager we will be using, we
will invite a series of contractors to
tender for our business. When that
exercise has been completed, the work
will commence.
Although everything is guesswork at the moment, I think the
earliest that we can expect to totally
occupy the building will be probably
March/April 2007. However, we could
possibly move one department into the
new building before Christmas, which
would then give us the opportunity to
enlarge our current Call Centre for the
busy period prior to Christmas.
Brian Rice
Chairman
Dial-a-Cab |
