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Mayor Sadiq Khan’s War On Uber: The Company Is Now Licence Less In London, One Of Its Key Markets
Sadiq Khan/gettyimages
In a major blow to Uber, London’s taxi regulator Transport for London (TfL) announced this morning (Nov 25) that it would not extend US-based ride-hailing app ’s license beyond midnight. Uber however will have 21 days to appeal the decision.
Uber called the decision “extraordinary and wrong”.
TfL said that Uber’s pattern of failures placed passenger safety and security at risk as a reult of which it could not renew the aggregator’s licence.
TfL aded that it has identified a pattern of failures by the company including several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk.
While crediting Uber with addressing some of these issues, TfL expressed lack ofconfidence that similar issues will not reoccur in the future, which has led it to conclude that the Uber is not fit for licence renewal at this time.
TfL said it had identified an issue that allowed unauthorized drivers to upload photos to other Uber drivers’ accounts and pick up passengers as though they were that driver. This resulted in approximately 14,000 uninsured trips, and helped at least one driver who had their license revoked by TfL gain access to Uber’s platform.
This is the second time in two years that Uber will be license-less in London. In Sep 2017, TfL did not renew the company’s licence saying that it was not a “fit and proper” operator as a taxi company for the streets of London.
Uber however appealed and continued to operate . In June 2018, the company gained a judicial repreive after a judge granted it a probationary 15-month license. The company had applied for a five-year permit
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been repeatedely accused of acting against Ubert to protect the vested interests of more than 21,000 black cab drivers.
Uber’s stock was down 6.3% in premarket trading as of 10:30 a.m. in London (5:30 a.m. ET) due to the fallout of TfL order. The stock price drop would wipe $3 billion off the $50.4 billion market cap Uber closed with on Friday.
In its PO filing earlier, Uber had disclosed that London was one of five cities that accounted for 24% of its global ride-hail bookings in 2018.
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