The popular ride-hailing service Uber has been stripped of its London licence.
This happened after the authorities found that more than 14,000 trips were taken with drivers who had faked their identity on the firm’s app. Besides failing repeated safety, the regulators also said it had identified a "pattern of failures", and said that Uber was not "fit and proper" as a license holder.
As a result, the Transport for London (TfL) announced its decision to not renew the ride-hailing company’s licence at the end of a two-month probationary extension granted in September.
This is TfL's second ban on the ride-hailing company. When TfL first rejected Uber’s licence renewal back in September 2017, the company persuaded the judges to award it a 15-month licence to continue.
In a statement, TfL said:
While TfL said Uber had since made positive improvements, the company still failed to create proper security. The main breach involved Uber in allowing unauthorized drivers to upload their own photographs to replace those of verified drivers.
There were 43 unverified drivers involved, who picked up passengers and made a total of at least 14,000 trips.
And among those drivers, TfL discovered that some had their licenses revoked, with one driver had been previously cautioned for distributing indecent images of children.
The incidents mostly occurred from late 2018 until early 2019, although TfL said it had only become aware of the extent of the problem just recently.
Uber said that had implemented technical fixes to resolve the issues. The firm also plans to bring in facial recognition technology to bolster its security systems, and reappeal.
"TfL’s decision not to renew Uber’s licence in London is extraordinary and wrong, and we will appeal," said Jamie Heywood, Uber’s regional general manager. “On behalf of the 3.5 million riders and 45,000 licensed drivers who depend on Uber in London, we will continue to operate as normal and will do everything we can to work with TfL to resolve this situation.”
Uber chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, said that TfL's decision was "just wrong".
"We understand we’re held to a high bar, as we should be. But this TfL decision is just wrong. Over the last two years we have fundamentally changed how we operate in London," the executive said.
On the opposing side, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, backed TfL’s decision. He said: “I know this decision may be unpopular with Uber users, but their safety is the paramount concern. Regulations are there to keep Londoners safe, and fully complying with TfL’s strict standards is essential if private hire operators want a licence to operate in London.”
Steve McNamara, the general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, which represents London black-cab drivers, said: “It’s all about public safety and the mayor has taken the right decision.
“As far as we’re concerned Uber’s business model is essentially unregulatable. It is based on everyone doing what they want and flooding London with vehicles. Uber cannot guarantee that the cars are properly insured, or that the person driving the car is the one that is supposed to be driving, as recent incidents show.”
This ban hits Uber hard, considering that London is one of Uber's top five markets globally, and is the company's largest market in Europe.
After the announcement, the firm's share fell almost 6% in pre-market trading in New York.
