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Compliance and enforcement

Safe Transport Victoria is responsible for helping ensure industry standards, regulatory obligations and community expectations are achieved across the commercial passenger vehicle industry.

Our approach is priority-focused on regulating to promote a safety culture in the industry. This ranges from raising industry awareness through education to taking more strategic and targeted interventions to help ensure Victoria has a safe, accessible, customer-focussed and competitive commercial passenger vehicle industry.

Quarterly Compliance and Enforcement Report - 31 December 2022

The below report outlines our monitoring, compliance and enforcement results over the last three months from regulatory activities that help us meet our strategic objectives.

Safety Operations chart

Vehicle Inspections

ST Vic have a safety duties approach that prioritises inspecting the highest risk vehicles to ensure that the required safety standards are being met by all participants in order to provide a safe service to all involved.

ST Vic’s Safety Compliance Officers conduct vehicle inspections to check the safety condition of the vehicles to ensure they comply with relevant Vehicle Standards. The responsibility to meet these standards are shared and enforced across all safety duty holders.

Whilst conducting vehicle inspections Safety Compliance Officers are ensuring drivers are complying with all accreditation requirements as well as using it as an opportunity to talk to drivers to ensure that they are aware of their safety duties for both their and their passenger’s safety.

Vehicles are inspected on the road, at ranks, at major events, and at our Quality Assurance Centre in Tullamarine where vehicles can get directed to attend for inspection. We also have temporary sites in outer suburban and regional locations so vehicle owners/drivers can be inspected closer to their usual working location rather than having to travel to Tullamarine for their inspection.

Any non-compliance identified during an inspection can result in action being taken in the form of defect notices (to repair items to make the vehicle safe and/or compliant with legislated requirements), Infringement notices or warning notices for failure to abide by legislative requirements.

The information and findings from these inspections will assist ST Vic in future safety operational activities and policies.

Booking Service Provider Safety System Inspections

Safe Transport Victoria’s safety compliance team regularly conduct safety system inspections on booking service providers (BSPs) throughout the industry. These inspections ensure that BSPs are meeting their legislative requirements as a safety duty holder within commercial passenger vehicle industry laws.

If any gaps are found within a BSPs safety systems during these inspections, our Safety Compliance Officers will work closely with the responsible people to ensure that reasonably practicable solutions are identified and implemented within a timely manner.

If the gap presents a significant enough safety risk to passengers, drivers or others involved in the provision of commercial passenger vehicle services then compliance action, initially in the form of an Improvement Notice, may be served.

Booking Service Provider (BSP) Audits

We conduct audits on BSPs to gauge how compliant they are with their regulatory obligations and responsibilities.

The audits assess BSPs systems and processes to ensure CPV services are provided safely. This will include related information, instruction, training or supervision provided to drivers.

Audits are generally about educating BSPs in the first instance to help them understand and adhere to their legislative requirements. After an education phase, we can escalate our compliance approach if noncompliance continues. Any enforcement action taken will be constructive, accountable, transparent, consistent and fair.

BSPs are encouraged to refer to the following links:

Multi Purpose Taxi Program Fraud

  • The Multi-Purpose Taxi Program (MPTP) assists with the travel needs of people with severe and permanent disabilities by offering subsidised commercial passenger vehicle fares to members.

MPTP funds, like all government funds, are finite and fraud is not a ‘victimless crime’

We devote significant audit, compliance and investigation resources to investigating and prosecuting instances of MPTP fraud and work closely with Victoria Police and other government agencies as part of this process. We also proactively engage with the  CPV industry, as part of a broader enforcement approach, to identify and target illegal behaviours and actively promote enforcement outcomes across the industry.

We actively formulate initiatives to identify improper and/or fraudulent use of MPTP cards. We then use the resulting information/intelligence to either develop, or refine existing, practices, processes and procedures in relation to detection, deterrence, mitigation, investigation and prosecution of MPTP fraud.

A key strategic priority for us to ensure we are an effective regulator, and that our investigation and detection methods work within the current commercial passenger vehicle industry structure, particularly when new transaction methods are introduced.

Booking Service Provider (BSP) Audits

We conduct audits on BSPs to gauge how compliant they are with their regulatory obligations and responsibilities.  These can often be targeted audits focusing on a single safety requirement, such as maintaining an appropriate risk register.

Audits are generally about educating BSPs in the first instance to help them understand and adhere to their legislative requirements (if they weren’t already).  After an education phase, we can escalate our compliance approach if noncompliance continues. Any enforcement action taken will be constructive, accountable, transparent, consistent and fair.

This quarter, our focus is checking the complaints management systems of Booked BSPs. Audits allow us to effectively regulate the industry and ensure safety duties are being met by BSPs, so that commercial passenger vehicle services have high safety standards and are customer focussed.

Targeted operations on unregistered and non-conventional platforms and unaccredited drivers

We regularly conduct operations, intelligence gathering exercises and education campaigns of both a covert and overt nature that target unregistered and non-conventional platforms and unaccredited drivers. For example, we are aware of people offering rides for cash, either with their own vehicle or a borrowed one. Some may not be aware what they are doing is illegal, and that they need to be accredited and their vehicle needs to be registered. Passengers also don’t have the reassurance that their driver has been vetted. Under our strategic objectives, we aim to allow competition, however as an effective regulator we also need people to meet their legal obligations, and offer a safe, customer focused service.

The aim, in the first instance, is to encourage these platforms and their drivers to become registered and accredited. Any compliance and enforcement activities will be constructive, accountable, transparent, appropriate and targeted. Any compliance actions taken will be proportionate, consistent and fair.

Our targeted operations will continue, and we will continue to take action on these illegal platforms while educating the public on their unsafe nature.