Transport for London has been hit with protests after a minicab driver suffered a fatal heart attack having waited months for his licence to be renewed.
The TfL board meeting on Wednesday had to be temporarily suspended after two protesters shouted from the public gallery for the mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan, who chairs the TfL board, to intervene.
The protests follow the death of long-serving minicab driver Robert Dale, 65, a married father of two, last November.
TfL’s three-month delay in renewing his licence left him unable to work and caused him to become “anxious, highly stressed, hopeless and fearful”, according to his family.
Hundreds and potentially thousands of the capital’s 108,000 private hire drivers have been left unable to work – for firms such as Uber - because of a massive backlog in TfL renewing their licences.
TfL admitted this week that it did not know how long it would take to clear the backlog, which also includes applications from people wanting to become licensed minicab drivers for the first time.
Mr Dale submitted his licence renewal application last August, ahead of its expiry in October.
He wrote a series of desperate emails to TfL in a bid to get the matter resolved.
In an email on October 28, he wrote: “Now I cannot earn a living, can’t pay my bills, can’t pay the mortgage, can’t buy food to feed my family [...] you as an organisation should be ashamed of yourself.”
Mr Dale collapsed from a heart attack and died on November 10.
TfL responded to him on November 13 and his new licence arrived on November 27.
On Wednesday, one protester repeatedly called on the mayor to “remember Rob Dale” as he was escorted from the City Hall gallery by security guards.
The man told Sir Sadiq and the TfL board that Mr Dale “had a heart attack due to the licence delay”.
He said minicab drivers were being “exploited” by TfL and there was widespread anger within the industry.
He said that TfL was guilty of “double standards” by not treating minicab drivers as well as licensed black taxi drivers.
Sir Sadiq asked the protester to leave his details with a member of staff and said the matter would be investigated.
TfL commissioner Andy Lord and Claire Mann, TfL’s chief operating officer, both made personal apologies at the board for the delays.
Ms Mann said: “I want to apologise personally for the fact that people have not had their licences renewed in the right timescale.”
Mr Dale’s son Ben and his family want TfL to formally acknowledge that the delays were a “significant contributory factor” in his death.
They want TfL to introduce a guaranteed right for minicab drivers to have their licences automatically renewed, on an emergency basis, if there is a processing delay.
Backed by the IWGB (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) union, they want to ensure that “what happened to our family never happens again”.
According to the IWGB, many minicab drivers in London have lost their cars, fallen into debt and are facing eviction due to the delays.
A family letter to Sir Sadiq and Mr Lord urged TfL to “stop treating this situation as a PR problem and begin treating drivers as human beings”.
The letter, signed by Mr Dale’s son, Ben, added: “My father’s life—and the lives of so many others—cannot be collateral damage in a broken licensing system.”
The IWGB held a vigil outside TfL’s Stratford office on May 29 in memory of Mr Dale and to demand urgent reform on behalf of drivers still affected.
Ben Dale said: “My dad loved his job as a driver because he got to meet so many different people and hear all their stories. He was happy, popular, and dedicated to his work.
“Sadly he was not the man we knew in the months leading up to his passing. The stress caused by being out of work, unable to earn, and kept in the dark about his licensing status consumed him.
“We will never get our dad back, but we don’t want other families to have to go through this pain, so we are calling on TfL to issue all drivers affected with emergency licenses immediately.”
Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB Union, said: “TfL’s mismanagement of this crisis is nothing short of a national scandal.
“For over six months, London’s private hire drivers have been unable to pay their bills or feed their families—yet there is still no resolution in sight.
“They must take accountability and act today - not next week, not next month - today - by issuing temporary licenses to all affected.”
Mr Lord, in his report to the TfL board, said new taxi and private hire licence-processing software had been introduced in February.
He wrote: “Introducing the software, coupled with the recovery from the cyber incident that impacted us last year, has led to licensing delays for some existing drivers and new applicants.
“The vast majority of drivers have not been impacted. We recognise the importance of an efficient licensing service to enable drivers to continue to work and we have taken steps to ensure that any delays are kept to a minimum.
“We have recruited and trained additional staff and established a temporary escalations process with taxi and private hire driver representative groups so that they can highlight individual member concerns.
“We have also granted private hire vehicle driver licences for a period of three months, where it is appropriate to do so, and we are satisfied that the drivers meet required licensing criteria so that they can continue to work.
“We will continue to work on faster processing of all applications so as to minimise delays.”
In a statement to The Standard on Thursday, Helen Chapman, TfL's director of licensing and regulation, said: “Our thoughts are with Mr Dale’s loved ones following his tragic death last year and we take the issues raised by his family extremely seriously.
“We're very sorry for any upset caused to Mr Dale's family by our handling of his case. While we cannot comment publicly on the detail of individual cases, we are carrying out a comprehensive review and will be responding to his family's concerns in full.
"We apologise to any drivers who experienced issues that impacted our processing times following last year’s cyber security incident.
“The safety of people using taxi and private hire services is paramount and when licensing an individual, we must ensure that the applicant meets licensing requirements and is fit to be licensed.
“Following the incident, we had to adapt our usual processes considerably and we kept drivers informed of these delays via a regulatory notice which was published in October 2024.
"We are aware that some drivers have been further impacted due to the introduction of a new licensing system.
“We have taken a number of steps to mitigate the impact of these delays by recruiting and training additional staff and granting short-term private hire vehicle driver licences where appropriate.
“We continue to take every possible step to rectify the delays as quickly as possible and support drivers through the process."
