A driver who refuses or neglects to be hired can now be given a fixed penalty of £1,000. The same notice, paid within 14 days, is £500. Standing for hire off a rank, and touting, are each £500, or £250 if paid within 14 days.
The change is Legal Notice 339 of 2026. It was published in the Gibraltar Gazette on Thursday 24 September and came into operation that day. It amends the fixed-penalty table in the Transport Regulations 2000. Each of the three amounts had been £300 (Legal Notice 339).
What the £1,000 covers
Regulation 68(1) says a taxi driver shall not, without reasonable excuse, do any of four things. Refuse to be hired while the taxi is standing on a rank. Refuse or neglect to drive to any place in Gibraltar the hirer indicates. Refuse or neglect to carry passengers up to the seating capacity. Refuse or neglect to take a reasonable amount of luggage with a passenger.
The regulation does not define a reasonable excuse. A prosecution, if the notice is not the route taken, is still a fine up to level 3 on the standard scale.
A driver may still accept a hail from a person next to a road, and may still take a pre-booked fare. Those two exceptions are in regulation 66. What regulation 66 forbids is plying or standing for hire anywhere other than a taxi rank or the security area of the port. Touting while doing that is the separate £500 offence.
The fine for the taxi at the front of a rank failing to take the first fare is unchanged, at £300. So is the fine for missing a city-service roster. This notice does not alter those.
A government spokesperson told GBC the old amounts were too low beside what a driver could make by turning down an ordinary fare for a Rock tour. The spokesperson said: “The public deserve a taxi service that is reliable and available. Those taxi drivers that do not hold the same view will be hit where it hurts, their pocket.”
GBC also reported that Transport Minister John Cortes told Parliament four taxis have been fined since July. The report does not say which offence those four notices were for.
Casemates
The legal notice does not mention Casemates. GBC reports a separate operating change, which the government says is now in effect.
The two-line system at Casemates, which separates Upper Rock tour taxis from city-service taxis, now runs only from 9am to 7pm. Outside those hours the rank is an ordinary rank, with no split between the two services. The government told GBC this fits the Nature Reserve’s early opening and drops a restriction outside the busiest tourist hours (GBC report).