Uber granted London operating licence following court ruling

Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE:UBER) has been granted a new licence to operate in London after the taxi app was previously banned from operating the capital due to safety concerns. In a ruling on Monday, Tanweer Ikram, deputy chief magistrate at the Westminster Magistrates Court said despite the company’s “historical failings”, he found that Uber was now a “fit and proper operator” to hold a private hire vehicle (PHV) operator’s licence in the capitol. READ: Uber heads to court in bid to win back London operating licence Uber initially lost its licence after Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transport regulator, uncovered several safety issues at the group including passenger trips with drivers who were fraudulently logging into the app using IDs of other people. Uber said since then it has made changes to its business model and thus should be able to return to one of its biggest markets, however, TfL refused to renew the operating licence last year, precipitating the recent court battle. In the ruling, Ikram went on to say he did not find “any evidence of concealment or ‘cover up’ on the part of [Uber] as regards the driver photo fraud issue”. However, while he felt the company was now able to hold a PHV operator licence, Ikram said he wished to hear from “the advocates on conditions and on my determination as to the length of a licence”, potentially setting up yet more disputes over how the company can operate in London in the future. London, and by extension the UK, remains one of Uber’s largest markets, explaining the strong desire for the ride-hailing group to retain its operating licence in the city. In 2016, shortly before the firm was banned from the capital amid its safeguarding issues, Uber raked in £37mln in revenues from London in the full year while the London segment of the business at the time was valued at £1.1bn. While this number was small by comparison to the rest of the business, with London contributing only around 0.6% of Uber’s total revenue for 2016, some analysts at the time forecast that by 2021 Uber’s UK operation could generate £1.9bn by 2021, around 40% of the country’s taxi and private vehicle hire market. Shares in Uber were up 4.3% at US$35.93 in pre-market trading in New York on Monday.