A BIZARRE council ruling that banned more hackney carriage drivers from operating in one part of the region has been overturned at Crown Court.

Halton Council have been forced into a U-turn on a mysterious policy which limited the number of black cabs in the borough to 267.

The local authority said the rule was based on an unmet demand survey from decades ago, but could produce no evidence of the survey, when this was taken or what justified the very specific figure.

However it was because of this rule that they refused to grant John Roberts, the owner of Frodsham & District Taxis, 13 licences to operate in the area when he applied last year.

Mr Roberts has been involved in a bitter, long-standing dispute with the council over the matter, and has attempted to persuade them of the need for more hackney carriages on a number of occasions.

At a heated Regulatory Committee meeting in November, his legal representative accused the local authority of being deliberately vague and refusing to budge “on a policy that you can’t see, based on a survey that we can’t see”.

The meeting saw frustrated taxi drivers argue that more black cabs were needed to meet the growing population of Halton, which has increased by over 30,000 since 1985, when the last unmet demand survey was thought to have been carried out.

Drivers also argued that a limited number of wheelchair accessible vehicles in the borough had led to cases of disabled people being stranded – and said granting more hackney licenses would alleviate this problem.

However this did not convince members of the regulatory committee who were advised by their legal representative to take the results of the mystery unmet demand service to be true.

Following the meeting, Mr Roberts said it was time to take the battle to the next stage and appeal against the ruling at Chester Crown Court.

The hearing, which took place last week, saw a judge rule that the council had not taken sufficient steps to ensure that such a cap is justified or that 267 was an appropriate number.

The council could not produce evidence of the unmet demand survey in court.

Instead they had argued that the number of taxis in its area per head exceeds that of neighbouring authorities, that the local taxi trade had signed a petition against granting additional licenses and that undertaking a new unmet demand survey would be prohibitively expensive.

A spokesperson from Taxi Defence Barristers, who represented Mr Rogers in court said: “The court disagreed with the council , agreeing with submissions made by District Taxi’s barrister, Stephen McCaffrey, who argued that assumptions made by the council were not evidence based and the only way to be confident would be to conduct a survey as is the requirement in Government guidance on the matter.”

In allowing the appeal, the judge remitted the matter back to the council for reconsideration, but with a “strong” recommendation that they immediately undertake an unmet demand survey so that allocations of taxi licence be done fairly and based on evidence not assumptions.

A spokesperson from Halton Council said: "Halton Borough Council is in the process of arranging for an unmet demand survey to be carried out in accordance with the Court decision."