Up to 25 pedicab riders face prosecution for excessive charging and loud music in town hall clampdown

By Jacob Phillips, Local Democracy Reporter

The West End streets plagued by pedicabs charging £100 for seven-minute trips are the focus of a major crackdown

Some of London’s pedicab riders may be banned from London streets as a council takes action to cut down on dodgy practices, including playing deafeningly loud music.

Westminster City Council has been working with the Met Police to take disreputable riders off the streets.

A meeting was told the council was taking 25 drivers to court facing charges relating to playing music too loudly across Soho, Covent Garden and China Town.

Councillor Heather Acton, in charge of communities, told Westminster City Council on January 20 she had witnessed the dodgy behaviour of pedicab drivers first hand.

She said: “We have been working with the police and we have been promised further operations. The feedback from operations has been good.

“Twenty-five riders playing amplified music at a level likely to be annoyance are going to have case papers submitted for prosecution under the control and pollution act.

“I have heard a pedicab driver asking for over £100 to take someone from Selfridges to Edgware Road.

“This is the sort of practice we have to stop.”

On hearing about the high charging at Westminster City Council’s full council meeting, one councillor retorted: “I’m in the wrong job.”

The council is now looking to bring in community prevention notices to try and ban pedicabs from certain parts of the city.

Westminster and City of London MP Nickie Aiken has asked Parliament twice to change the rules on pedicabs.

The MP recently said she heard a group of tourists were charged £380 to travel between Leicester Square and Streatham Street.

If they had taken an Uber it could have cost around £7.

Rickshaws or pedicabs are the only vehicles in Central London that do not require regulation and are treated in the same way as a horse and carriage under the law.

Pedicabs laws have not been updated since 1869 and the rickshaws are treated legally as stage carriages.

Anyone can drive a pedicab in central London and charge visitors for journeys without a permit or licence.

The drivers do not have to pass safety checks. It is feared that they do not have to abide by the same stringent rules as licensed cab drivers.

Nickie Aiken MP recently received support from Boris Johnson and the government to get the vehicles regulated.

Pictured: Photographer Steve Meyer’s family enjoying an inexpensive, quiet pedicab journey on a pedicab in Westminster with driver Friedel.