A union has waded in on a battle between taxi cab firms and Transport for London (TfL) over licence fees saying it “discriminates minority minicab drivers.”

Licenced Private Hire Car Association (LPHCA) took TfL to judicial review yesterday after the transport body increased licence fees for taxi operators in September 2017.

Union for Private Higher Drivers (UPHD) had wanted to get involved with the court proceedings – but were told last year they could not by a judge.

It believes operator costs should not be increased so steeply.

James Farrar, chairman of the United Private Hire Driver's branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britian, said: "It's not surprising that gig economy bosses represented by the LPHCA are fighting tooth and nail to pass their cost and regulatory burden on to drivers. But it's dismaying to see TfL work so hard to avoid answering some troubling questions about how it discriminates against 117,000 mostly minority minicab drivers.

“We will be watching this case very carefully and we'll continue to pursue other avenues to challenge institutional racism at Transport for London.

“The operator is the principal in the business. It can't pan off its responsibilities.”

Previously private hire vehicle operators were divided into two categories a ‘small’ operator -with no more than two vehicles, and a ‘standard’ operator, operators with more than two vehicles, regardless of the size of their taxi fleet.

A so called ‘small’ operator would pay £1,488 licencing fee, lasting five years and ‘standard’ operator would pay £2,826 for a licencing fee, lasting for the same period of time.

The new TfL fee structure replaced this system and separated charges for private hire vehicles into eight different categories.

Licensing charges now range from £2,000 for a five-year licence for those with 10 vehicles or fewer, to £464,000 per year for the largest operator.

TfL said that this would ensure the licence fee structure for private hire operators reflected the costs of compliance activity according to the scale of each operator.

A spokesperson for TfL said: “The changes will fund an additional 250 compliance officers who do a crucial job in driving up standards and ensuring Londoners remain safe. After listening to the views of stakeholders during consultation we amended the fees structure to take into account the potential impact on small and medium-sized operators.

“We consider the changes to fees to be proportionate and will be defending our position.”