Unintended consequences can be the curse of good decisions

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the Institute of Licensing (IoL) Taxi Day in York. The day was well organised, interesting and useful, and was mainly attended by licensing officers from across the country.

The agenda was forward-looking and there were useful insights into what actually is coming next and what could be.

The IoL is an increasingly credible organisation that announced this week that it had merged with NALEO (National Association of Licensing Enforcement Officers) which used to deliver training for licensing officers. The IoL has recently appointed a CEO who intends to grow the organisation. I understand that most IoL members are licensing teams from across the country and it appears well funded and successful.

Licensing officers can enhance their knowledge, add IoL events to their CPD (Continuous Professional Development) register and generally stay abreast of the changing environment in licensing. I suppose in local government terms the IoL is what good looks like.

Bad bones and lunatics

At the outset, please let me assure you that I don’t think the people who run the IoL have a bad bone in their body. But a licensing officer-centric view of the industry, policy, legislation and direction of travel may or may not be what the industry needs.

Due to the low participation in the representation of this industry, the vacuum will be filled by others such as the IoL and perhaps others who may not be so well intentioned. Does that matter? Perhaps.

The best-made decisions can often suffer from that old problem of unforeseen consequences. That danger lurks when decisions are made about our industry without us being in the driving seat.

This industry has a great history of letting things just happen and then springing into action with bucket collections, emergency meetings, huffing and puffing about judicial reviews and then just suffering the consequences and the erosion of our industry. The first sign of lunacy is often described as repeatedly doing the same thing but expecting a different outcome. We may not be lunatics, but slow learners would appear to be an appropriate term.

Having often had responsibility for public affairs in businesses I got used to public affairs agencies telling me their job was to keep our company out of the press. The officers of the company often measured success by the number of photos, articles and interviews that mentioned the company. I guess representation is similar.

The best approach lacks excitement

Organisations are not seen as ‘active’ unless they are organising petitions, ranting and raving at meetings about how “we are not going to stand for this” and earnestly, and often embarrassingly, shouting at politicians and/or policymakers about changes that were well publicised and have gone through a perfectly reasonable process.

But from the perspective of achieving the best for their members, surely horizon-scanning, early intervention, and developing credible policies must be a better plan. Then policy makers can pick up and run with our plans, knowing the industry is behind them, providing a more stable and solid environment in which the industry can grow and prosper.

Whether we like it or not the world is run by people who attend meetings. The ones that get invited most often to such meetings have read the nerdy reports, the dusty policies and proposals and go with well prepared key points to steer the meeting toward their

Dr Michael Galvin

views. Those who advocate a “shoot from the hip, this just needs common sense” approach, delivered with emotional and dramatic lines such as “this will devastate the industry” don’t get asked back.

One could point to a £13.5bn a year industry and smugly observe that we have done okay, do we need to do anymore? Won’t we always be needed? Well surviving and thriving may sound similar but the difference between the two is significant. We have the day-to-day issues; signage, cross border hiring, VAT and the 101 local issues but maybe they will just be forgotten, and we can survive for a few more years.

That won't affect us

Maybe. But what of net zero, autonomous cars and AI? No, no Mike, they won’t impact us we will just carry on as we are, stop worrying. What about the Government’s white paper, Integrated National Transport Strategy for England? Could there be rich pickings in there for our industry? Living on an island or in a bubble has its advantages, one being that you can enjoy the time up until something happens. Once it happens you find you are woefully unprepared for it.

Maybe. But what of net zero, autonomous cars and AI? No, no Mike, they won’t impact us we will just carry on as we are, stop worrying. What about the Government’s white paper, Integrated National Transport Strategy for England? Could there be rich pickings in there for our industry? Living on an island or in a bubble has its advantages, one being that you can enjoy the time up until something happens. Once it happens you find you are woefully unprepared for it.

So the exam question is a simple one: is it best to wait until change is here and we are on the back foot or should we be proactive? Should we, as an industry, be looking at what is coming down the line and thinking about whether it could be good for us under certain circumstances or a threat to our very existence?

Let’s take a very high-level look at autonomous cars – who will ensure that they are where customers want or need them? Who will clean, maintain and repair them? Maybe your company could or maybe AI will. The answer won’t be binary.

Who knows if we were to look into the future, we may actually be drivers for change rather attempting to block or more likely reverse development. Who knows? We may be able to move from surviving to thriving.