Skip to main content

Uber granted 15-month trial to operate in London

Uber is now operating in London, UK, on a 15-month licence grant following a decision by Westminster Magistrates Court. The move follows Transport for London’s (TfL’s) refusal to renew the company’s licence in 2017. Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot deemed Uber as ‘fit and proper’ and ordered the company to pay TfL’s legal costs of £425,000. The ride-hailing firm claims it has now made substantial changes by replacing senior management.
June 27, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
8336 Uber is now operating in London, UK, on a 15-month licence grant following a decision by Westminster Magistrates Court. The move follows 1466 Transport for London’s (TfL’s) refusal to renew the company’s licence in 2017.


Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot deemed Uber as ‘fit and proper’ and ordered the company to pay TfL’s legal costs of £425,000.

The ride-hailing firm claims it has now made substantial changes by replacing senior management.

The decision has not been welcomed by consumer group SumOfUs. Campaigner Eoin Dubsky says: "The bottom line is that Uber remains a shady corporation and shouldn’t have been granted a new licence until it can show drivers are treated fairly.”

In a statement, Caroline Pidgeon, chair of the London Assembly’s transport committee, says court action has forced Uber to improve its working practices and TfL must ensure the conditions of the renewed licence are enforced.

“The safety of Londoners must come first and we will be keeping a close eye on the way Uber operates,” Pidgeon adds.

UTC

Related Content

  • November 10, 2015
    User-based insurance joins the battle for big data
    User-based insurance is blazing a trail others would like to follow and is also discovering the challenges. The ITS sector needs to keep a very careful eye on the automotive industry: “There’s a war going on in the connected car space creating richer datasets than we ever imagined possible” says Paul Stacy, research and development director of Wunelli, part of the LexisNexis group. The car makers have gone way beyond infotainment, unlocking huge amounts of data in the process … facts and figures which the i
  • March 15, 2019
    Spark and Ohmio trial 5G-connected driverless car in New Zealand
    Telecoms operator Spark has joined forces with Ohmio Automotion to trial a 5G-connected driverless car on the streets of Auckland, New Zealand. The test was carried out in a controlled area at Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter Innovation Precinct, using Spark’s pre-commercial 5G network, which is available as part of its 5G Innovation lab. Spark launched the lab last November and is now using it to work with businesses in New Zealand to test the technical capabilities of 5G. Ohmio’s driverless car has b
  • February 1, 2012
    Include ITS in policy decisions from the start, not as an afterthought
    DG TREN's Fotis Karamitsos, on why the European Commission's new ITS Action Plan is looking to the past for future direction. The European Commission's (EC's) new Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe, which was announced as 2008 drew to a close, intends that transport and travel become 'cleaner; more efficient, including energy efficient; and safer and more secure'. At first sight, that wording might be interpreted as marking a significant policy shift within Europe, wit
  • September 19, 2017
    Michigan fosters real-world testing of workzone ITS
    Turning a ‘problem’ into ‘an opportunity’ is the mantra of just about every business book and Michigan Department of Transportation (MDoT) looks set to achieve that aim in Oakland County, where 29km (18 miles) of the I-75 needs to be reconstructed. Running north-northwest from Detroit, the I-75 carries around 170,000 vehicles per day but, being built in the 1970s, it now requires an additional lane in each direction and upgrading to the latest design and safety standards. Upgrading will be carried out in