Magistrates have dismissed Zulfiqar Ali’s appeal against Bradford Council. His private hire licence, revoked on 12 March, stays revoked. He was ordered to pay the council £640.
Ali, 48, of Hopefield Way, off Rooley Lane, was granted the licence in November 2025. The police stop was in February, about three months later. He appealed, so he kept the licence until the hearing at Bradford Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday 7 October.
What the officer saw
A patrol on Rooley Avenue saw his taxi weaving in its lane. At the lights near Asda, the officer pulled alongside and looked into the Uber. Nicola Hoskins, for the council, said the phone was in the middle of the steering wheel, the screen lit, with an app on display. When Ali saw the officer, he dropped the phone onto the passenger seat.
He was given six penalty points and reported the offence to the council himself.
Ali, speaking through an Urdu interpreter, said the phone had fallen from a caddy on the windscreen and he was putting it back. He denied using it. He said he had driven a taxi for 14 years, previously on a Birmingham licence, and that there had been no earlier incidents.
The five-year rule
Steven Knighton, Bradford’s regulatory and compliance manager, told the court that a mobile-phone offence is treated as incredibly serious, and as an offence of choice. He said the policy stops that driver holding a licence for five years. Ali had only just finished the council’s training on driving offences, he said, so it should have been fresh.
Bradford’s driver suitability policy, still the March 2019 version, puts driving while using a hand-held telephone or other device at five years. That is the time that should pass, from the date of the conviction where a fine was imposed, before a licence will be granted. For a driver who already holds one, “refused” in that table means revoked. Fixed penalty notices are counted in the same way as convictions.
The council is supposed to leave the policy only in exceptional circumstances. A clean record, and the effect on the driver or his family, are not ordinarily enough. There have to be clear and compelling reasons.
Ali’s representative, Mr Iqbal, said Bradford had been too rigid, and had departed from the policy in other cases. The hearing did not set out what those cases were. After about an hour, the magistrates said there was no compelling reason to let him keep the licence.
Twenty-five revocations
A freedom of information reply, reported by the Telegraph and Argus, says 25 Bradford drivers have had a taxi licence revoked for a mobile-phone conviction since 2024. The council said its system could not produce figures back to 2019.
Eight private hire drivers were revoked in 2024. In 2025 it was eight private hire drivers and one hackney carriage driver. So far in 2026, eight more private hire drivers have lost a licence. Ali is one of the 25.