THE council has revealed how many complaints have been made against taxi drivers in Herefordshire, after it previously claimed its system could not access this information.

But it still has not been able to say what happened after the allegations were made.

In response to a Freedom of Information request by the Hereford Times for the number of complaints made about taxi drivers in the county, the council said that its "reporting systems" were unable to find the data.

After the HT submitted a second request, the council revealed that there have been 85 complaints in the last five years.

Originally, the council said that manually searching for this information, along with details of the outcomes of the complaints, would take at least 1,043 hours and would involve looking through 3,212 files and 23,273 emails.

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The council has still been unable to provide information on the outcomes of the 85 complaints, but did break down the types of complaints made.

Five of the complaints were about a driver smoking, eight were about abusive or rude drivers and 11 concerned "inappropriate behaviour", while a total of 27 complaints were made about drivers overcharging, refusing fares, or being unlicensed. 

There were also 34 reports of dangerous driving which the council say were reported to police.

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Responding to the original FOI request, which was refused, the council had said: "This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within 18 hours.

"Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested officers would need to manually check individual files for this information.

"An initial search has shown that 3,212 files and 23,273 emails would need to be checked.

"The details would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated, this would take at least 1,043 hours."

Under the FOI Act, public bodies can refuse requests if they estimate that responding will take 18 hours or more.