Mr. Hugh Creegan:

When the local area hackneys were introduced back in 2013 there was a concern around ensuring that we did not displace the business of existing taxi and hackney drivers. In conjunction with the taxi advisory committee, which is a consultative group for the taxi industry and includes consumer groups and various other parties, we devised a system whereby we required local authorities to endorse the application and confirm there was not a significant number of other taxis or hackneys operating in the area. We also required sign-off from local groups, be they local business groups or registered charities. Those steps were in place previously. We believe we should simplify those and remove most of those burdens in order to make the process simpler. We will dial back those two steps as far as possible to make the application process as simple as possible.