Will Uber survive this?
Uber learned Friday, that their licence will not be renewed by Transport for London (TfL), the firm was shocked although most Londoner’s anticipated this move, TfL said that Uber is “not fit and proper to hold a private licence.”
Despite losing their licence the firm has 21 days to appeal, Uber emailed their customers Friday in a bid to hit back, they have urged their customers to support the firm’s petition and said:
“We are sure Londoners will be as astounded as we are by this decision. By trying to ban the app from the capital, the Mayor and Transport for London have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.
“Not only will this decision deprive you of the choice of a convenient way of getting about town, it will also put more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on our app out of work.”
Uber’s new boss, Tom Elvidge said that losing their licence will affect 3.5m people, and said “To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts.”
Uber has been plagued with problems, more recently a cross-party group of 10 MPs had earlier urged the transport body to strip Uber of its licence by signing a letter.
The MPs had also claimed that Uber is an “unfit and improper operator” in the light of recent accusations towards Uber’s apparent failure to report sex attacks by drivers on passengers and its questionable business practices.
In August the head of the Met police taxi and private hire unit, Inspector Neil Billany said that Uber are “deciding what [crimes] to report,” so it seems.
Billany said in a letter to Helen Chapman, who is the head of taxis and private hire at Transport for London (TfL) that: “Had Uber notified police after the first offence, it would be right to assume that the second would have been prevented.”
he safety and security of the public” as they [Uber] are not sharing any alleged crime to the police but only telling the police about “less serious matters” that will be “less damaging to their reputation.”
The Met police in 2016 were aware that six sexual assaults, an assault along with two public order offences that had taken place, it was reported to TfL and Uber.
Billany wrote: “The two public order offences mentioned above are subject to a six-month prosecution time limit so subsequently both were taken no further as, by the time we became aware of the offence, we had no power to proceed, despite both having clear evidence of an offence taking place.
“By not reporting to police promptly, they are allowing situations to develop that clearly affect the safety and security of the public.”
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