Fife taxi operators have called for the resignation of the Licensing Committee convenor as council failure costs the trade over six months of lost fare increases

Taxi fares should have risen on 3 December 2025 but Fife Council missed the deadline and there will not be an increase now until the summer, leaving operators short by more than six months of urgently needed fare income.

Fife Council fixes taxi fares via meters which all taxis have to have installed. According to the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, fare scales have to be reviewed at intervals not exceeding 18 months. The current fare scale came into effect on 3rd June 2024.

Fife Council's taxi fare review process was formally initiated at the Regulation and Licensing Committee on 9 September 2025, with the committee agreeing to commence the 2025 taxi fare review and publish proposed scales for consultation. The consultation ran until 10 November 2025, ahead of the intended new scale effective date of 3 December 2025.

However, the Committee failed to implement the new fare scale at its meetings of 2nd December or 13th January, where the outstanding increase did not even feature on the agenda. Now operators have been told an increase won't come into force until the summer.

At a heated meeting on 3rd February with taxi and private hire operators from across Fife, business owners expressed anger to the Depute Convenor of the Licensing Committee, Cllr Patrick Browne, that the Committee's failure to follow their statutory obligations in time meant operators lost out on months of fare increases. Fife Council solicitor Steven Paterson agreed the Council had failed to meet its obligations and apologised to operators.

Operators rejected the Depute Convenor's attempt to blame operators for the delay because they objected to how small the increases were at the statutory consultation. They said the Committee should have listened to operators in the first place and set more realistic fare scales. They accused the Committee of being out of touch with the taxi trade, with very few, if any, of the members having any experience of the pressures of running a small business, let alone a taxi company.

East Fife Taxi Association spokesperson Linda Holt, who attended the meeting, commented: "Taxi operators have to comply with a whole raft of legislation and regulation - if they fail to do so, they have to pay. When Fife Council fails to fulfil its statutory duties, they don't pay but taxi operators do.

"This is a significant failure by the Committee which is costing operators dearly when trading conditions are already extremely hard. For many small operators, six months of delayed increases represents thousands of pounds in lost income.

"We want to see some accountability from the Committee, which is why we are calling for the resignation of its convenor Cllr Tom Adams. We have written to Cllr Adams on numerous occasions in the past year and have never received a reply."

"The reason the Licensing Committee called the meeting with operators was to discuss the issue of vehicle age limits, a meeting which was initially promised for the autumn after EFTA wrote to Licensing in early August last year. The requirement that vehicles must be less than five years old at first registration and must be taken off the road by the time they are ten years old imposes a significant financial burden on operators.

"Operators feel they are being squeezed from all sides — rising costs, strict vehicle policies, and now delayed fare decisions. Every day the Licensing Committee dithers and delays on raising fare scales and lifting vehicle age limits, operators in Fife are losing money and leaving the trade."

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