Pendle Council and Nelson private hire firm set for legal battle

The authority said vehicles belonging to the company, based in Leeds Road, failed it’s latest safety tests.

However UK Cars manager Shafiq Latif denied its 17 cars were unsafe and said they had passed private and council road-worthiness tests.

MORE TOP STORIES:

He said the company, owned by his bother Arif Chaudhry, was appealing the decision to the magistrates court as ‘unfair’.

The firm can continue to operate until the appeal has been heard and decided.

Following spot checks in November, the council’s Taxi Licensing Committee insisted that that every vehicle in UK Cars’ fleet be tested again.

It stated that if any vehicles failed the test, UK Cars operator’s licence would be revoked.

Neil Watson, Pendle Council’s licensing manager, said: “Unfortunately all of the vehicles tested failed their latest pre-arranged checks.

“The standard of UK Cars’ vehicles is unacceptably poor and I’m disappointed that they didn’t make any improvements despite our very clear warning they needed to.

“We have to put the safety of passengers first which is why we have no other option but to revoke its operator’s licence.”

Mr Latif said: “We are a family-run firm which takes safety very seriously.

“We feel we have been treated unfairly compared to other private hire companies in Pendle.

“We had all our vehicles privately tested and then checked by the council and in our opinion all those checked passed.

“We shall be appealing this decision to revoke our operators licence as we think it is wrong.”

Mr Watson said in response: “Pendle has revoked the operator’s license of UK Cars due to concerns over the operator’s being fit and proper people to operate a taxi company due to the persistently poor standards of their vehicles.

“The company has chosen to appeal the decision to revoke their license and that appeal will now be heard in the magistrates court.

“Until that case is heard it would not be appropriate for us to comment further.”