After our appearance on Look North on 13 April we are keen to respond to Sheffield City Council’s consultation on its draft Private Hire Operator and Vehicle Licence Policy. During the programme wheelchair user Professor Cameron shared his experiences of the difficuties he encounters accessing taxis and our own James Martin expressed concern about how policy issues affect disabled people adversely.
Disability Sheffield is putting together a response to the consultation pulling together disabled peoples’ views and ways to improve access to minicabs and taxis. This policy review ends on May 6th.
So we are looking for your recent stories – your experiences, both good and bad – of using taxis in Sheffield. If you would like to share your views with us to include as evidence in our consultation response please email consultations@disabilitysheffield.org.uk for details.
The consultation is not limited to wheelchair users and we would also like to hear from people with different disabilities and carers/personal assistants for disabled people as well.
Disability Sheffield’s James Martin said: “Peoples’ recent stories will be useful for future committee meetings to discuss the new policies we are preparing a response for as we are conscious that unless bold change happens disabled people will continue to be substantially worse off in terms of the experience of and access to taxi and cab services.”
The information provided to the council is confidential and will be treated in line with UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Data will only be published in aggregated form; we will not publish anything which would allow any individuals to be identified from their responses. The data will be held on a secure database. Participants can ask to have details removed from this database by emailing taxilicensing@sheffield.gov.uk
