TAXI drivers in York have warned the credit crunch is pushing them to “breaking point” as a fresh study was ordered into whether a block should be put on allowing more cabs on to the city’s streets.

City of York Council has said it will not decide whether proposals to issue two extra hackney carriage licences every six months should be dropped until it takes another look at the level of demand for the vehicles.

York Taxi Association (YTA) had asked the authority to immediately freeze the number of black cabs in the city, claiming allowing more drivers into the trade would overload ranks and create an unmanageable scramble for passengers.

Instead, all options will remain on the table until the findings of the new survey are known – and hackney carriage drivers will have to foot the estimated £3,720 bill to carry it out through their own licence fees.

A meeting of the authority’s licensing and regulatory committee decided it could not change or dump its policy without gathering additional evidence on the taxi situation, as doing so might expose it to legal action from some of the 184 drivers currently on the waiting list for a York hackney carriage licence.

But YTA committee member Alan Rowley fears the survey will be a waste of valuable time as the trade feels the pinch of the recession and the growth of late-night bus services.

“Last year, a survey said 15 new licences were needed to meet demand and these were issued, then the council decided it wanted to issue more – so presumably drivers are now going to pay for another survey to say exactly the same thing as the last one,” he said, “But any study must be representative of the actual demand for taxis. If the council sticks with its current policy and allows more licences, the trade will be devastated – it’s at breaking point already because there isn’t enough work to go round.

“There needs to be fairness to those wanting to come into the taxi trade, but they have to realise all that glitters is not gold. They see a busy city centre at weekends and think we’re earning fortunes – if they saw us on a Monday afternoon, they’d wonder how we make a living.

“We’ve bent over backwards to comply with the council in the past – now we need them to listen to us.”

YTA deputy chairman Stuart Robertson said: “The 15 new licences issued last year have already made everybody’s slice of the cake smaller – if it gets smaller again, drivers’ incomes are going to be disproportionately affected.

“That could mean them working longer hours or doing less vehicle maintenance to save money, all of which has safety repercussions.”

Committee chairman Coun Ian Gillies said he felt the policy could not be amended or ditched without another survey.

He said: “Our advice is that suspending the licence policy now would leave us open to legal challenges from drivers on the waiting list. If this policy is going to be changed, because of the world we live in, any changes have to be evidenced.”