Pedicab pandemonium? Unlicensed and unstoppable since 1869
“This is one of the biggest issues in Westminster,” Nickie Aiken MP told Morning Wire, earnestly, minutes after the King’s announcement today.
It’s not surprising she was excited: the former leader of Westminster City Council has spent a full four years campaigning to remove a loophole on unlicensed pedicabs.
Why is this issue so important, Morning Wire asked Aiken? “Have you been to the West End?” she retorted.
And it’s true, if you’ve ever been in Soho on Friday night, you’ve probably seen (or at least heard) these funky-coloured three-wheeled chariots cruising along Oxford Street.
But it’s just not a shady underbelly of illegal rickshaws the government is looking to scupper.
When the King – on behalf of the government – pledged to end the “scourge of unlicensed pedicabs” in the capital, he was actually referring to all pedicabs – because under a strange legal loophole none of these vehicles are licensed.
In practice this means the tuk tuks can charge different fares per journey – sometimes meaning customers get slapped with whopping charges (last month a Belgian tourist was coerced into paying £464 for a seven-minute, one-mile ride). It also means they are the preferred use of transport for some sex trade traffic, according to the Evening Standard.
Outside the capital they are classed the same as taxis and therefore are licensed as such – though in practice the vehicles have only swarmed in on Oxford and Edinburgh.
“They’re a menace to London,” Ros Morgan, chief executive of the Heart of London Business Alliance told Morning Wire
It’s hard to estimate just how many of the pedal-powered rickshaws are operating in the capital – though figures from 2017 suggested there were 1,500 that year when the numbers were on an upward trajectory.
In 2022 Westminster City Council slapped £30,000 in fines on the vehicles which it called “unlicensed and unsafe”. The council even spent good money going on a campaign drive last year delivering leaflets warning of the “dangers” of pedicabs.
It’s been an uphill battle to enforce rules for these rides – Sunak’s government will build on a private member’s bill, previously presented by Aiken in 2021, which would require pedicabs to have stricter licensing requirements, administered by Transport for London. Paul Scully MP proposed a similar bill in 2018.
The business community’s reaction has been overwhelmingly positive – and the London Pedicab Operators Association has previously said licensing is overdue, presumably because rule-abiding pedallers would like to elbow out the bad actors from their ranks.
“Only the criminals will regret that this century-old loophole will finally be closed,” said James Watkins, head of policy at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Meanwhile, if you ask a London pedicab driver who the master of the industry is, you might get pointed to “the big boss in King’s Cross”. Most of the drivers lease their vehicles from this shadowy entity, who may or may not exist and may or may not be located in the area around St Pancras station.