A taxi driver who threatened to leave a child with special needs “in the middle of the forest with the wolves” has been stripped of his taxi licence.
The driver had been doing school runs for the child, and said that he made the threat in the summer to stop the “agitated” child kicking the doors and windows in the car.
He stopped the car on the journey home from school, opened the child’s car door and said: “Please stop. If you don’t stop, you stay here in the middle of the forest with the wolves”.
As is typical for taxi driver hearings at Bath & North East Somerset Council, the case was heard in a private session of the licensing subcommittee, but the minutes of the meeting in November have now been publicly published.
The taxi driver, who has not been named, said that he had been trying to calm an unsafe situation.
He said that the child had also kicked her school escort and he thought it would be unsafe to drive while the behaviour continues.
But the special educational needs coordinator at the child’s school said that the child, who has “complex emotional needs”, had been “visibly scared” to get in the taxi because the driver had been shouting out of his car window at her.
The driver said he had to raise his voice because the child was far away, but said he did not yell.
The special educational needs coordinator added that the child had mentioned several times that she felt the taxi driver was not kind to her.
The driver accepted that he had also threatened to leave the child on a previous occasion when the child had also been “agitated,” but said that the child’s school escort and mother had approved of his actions on that occasion.
He accepted that the child and their school escort had been upset by the incident in the summer. The child reportedly cried for 10 or 20 seconds after the driver made the threat, and the school escort later made a complaint.
The driver had attended a safeguarding course after the incident, but said he had not understood it all due to a language barrier and did not remember much about the course.
Bath & North East Somerset Council’s licensing subcommittee ruled that the driver “does not have the appropriate judgement of how to deal with children he is responsible for transporting” and stripped him of his taxi driver and private hire licence.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
