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City of Wolverhampton Council issue taxi and PHV tyre safety warning after enforcement teams find exposed cords during Manchester checks
Taxi and private hire drivers are being reminded of the importance of regular tyre checks after licensing enforcement officers discovered a vehicle with exposed tyre cords during compliance activity in Manchester.
Wolverhampton City Council’s Public Protection service said its Northern Compliance Team had been working alongside police and other licensing colleagues during a busy weekend of enforcement activity marking the start of Tyre Safety Month.
Checks were carried out at several locations, including Manchester Airport and Manchester city centre. The council said one tyre inspected at Piccadilly Station was found with its cords exposed, indicating severe wear.
Images released by the authority show officers inspecting tyres at the roadside, including the tread condition of a vehicle being checked. A separate image shows a tyre tread guide being used as part of the inspection activity.
The Manchester work formed part of wider activity by Wolverhampton’s Northern Compliance Team, which also operated in Hull and Chorley over the weekend. The authority did not provide figures for the total number of vehicles inspected, or state how many licensing or enforcement actions resulted from the checks.
Tyre condition is particularly important for taxi and private hire vehicles because of the high mileages commonly covered and the potential for tread depth to deteriorate quickly. Drivers working long shifts can accumulate substantially more mileage between routine inspections than ordinary motorists.
For cars, the legal minimum tread depth is 1.6mm across the central three-quarters of the breadth of the tyre and around its entire circumference.
Exposed cords represent a substantially more serious defect than simply approaching the minimum tread depth. Drivers should therefore be checking not only tread depth but also for uneven wear, cuts, bulges and other visible damage, particularly where vehicles are operating intensively.
The latest activity also demonstrates the cross-border nature of taxi and private hire enforcement. Wolverhampton licenses a large private hire population whose vehicles and drivers can work across local authority boundaries, meaning compliance teams can encounter Wolverhampton-licensed vehicles far beyond the West Midlands.
The operation comes during Tyre Safety Month, putting additional attention on vehicle condition as licensing teams and police conduct roadside checks.
