Station stand-off as waiting taxi is fined

2:57pm Friday 21st November 2008

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Angry taxi drivers blocked traffic outside Brighton Station during rush hour after a parking row with police.

Drivers held the impromptu strike after one of them was ticketed by police as he waited to get on to the taxi rank.

The strike happened at 6pm on Wednesday night after cabbie Graham Kinsey was handed the fine.

Fellow cabbies were so furious they refused to budge from the rank, causing chaos on roads around the station. The drivers eventually ended their strike after 90 minutes.

Commuter Adrian Newnham, 39, returning from his banking job in London, was caught in the mess but had sympathies with the drivers.

He said: “Taxi drivers cannot move once they are in that rank.”

A Sussex Police spokeswoman said the row was over the £60 ticket.

She said: “A driver was issued with a ticket because he was causing an obstruction and wouldn’t follow police instructions to move on.

“Certainly we understand that the taxi rank is too small and there are clear issues.

“Our road policing unit and taxi licensing officer are looking at that.”

Andy Charalambous, vicechairman of taxi firm Streamline said the rank was mainly used by independent cabbies and that the cause of the problem was too many taxis had permission to use the area.

He said: “There are 17 spaces for taxis to stop and the company that issues the permits for £420 a year has issued 313. If a taxi goes up there and the spaces are taken they should officially move on somewhere else and what happened there they always end up hanging at the station.”

He added that a possible solution had been discussed in the past where taxis would queue at the back of the station and wait until there was space at the front.

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman added that if cab firms wanted to speak to the authority to ask for help in finding a solution to the problem it would be more than happy to do so.

A Southern spokesman said: “Brighton and Hove is a very busy city with many events taking place most of the time. The rate of rotation of taxis at the station is usually quite swift which means queues rarely form at the station.

“Southern meets regularly with the taxi association and if this is becoming an issue, then the question of permit allocation may well appear on the agenda of our next meeting.”

A history of friction It is not the first time that rows have become heated at the rank outside Brighton train station.

In July taxi drivers held a protest after two cabbies were arrested after a similar parking row.

Brighton city centre was brought to a standstill when scores of taxi drivers pulled up at busy ranks and got out of their cars in a two-hour protest over the arrests.

The arrested drivers had been queuing at a drop-off point in Queen’s Road to get on to the station rank when they were told to move from the double yellow lines.