Protest over council low-emissions private hire rules

Private hire vehicle operators have protested outside a council over new low-emissions regulations that they say are damaging their businesses.

Reading Borough Council introduced new rules in February, under which any vehicles that were more than 15 years old had to be retired.

That limit will fall to a maximum of 12 years old in February 2027 and 10 years old in February 2028, but drivers said the changes were having a real impact.

The council said it was happy to meet with the drivers and talk about the imminent "transition" to different vehicles.

As part of the changes from February, all vehicles that are added to fleets in Reading must at least meet the ULEV emissions standard and be less than five-years-old.

But drivers who have changed their vehicles to comply with the policies said they had suffered, with their new ones unable to achieve the mileage others can.

Yasser Araraf said he had slept in his electric car while waiting for it to charge and that its range had made longer trips, like a recent one to Lancashire, much more difficult.

"It was late at night - the office gave me a job from Reading to Chorley," he said.

"I had to stop twice. It took me from nearly 02:00 until about 09:00 – long hours to come back and I was really tired."

Nazneen Ali, whose family runs a business that takes pupils with disabilities to school, said it could not afford to replace vehicles to meet the new policies.

"We have been running school transport for years and we have come to a point that [changing] these vehicles with no transition time means we can't meet these conditions," she said.

John Ennis, the council's lead councillor for climate change and transport, said: "I'm quite happy to listen and to meet again with [private hire vehicle operators] and talk about the transition from the vehicles many drivers have now to what is needed in the future."