Electric taxi and private hire drivers in Mid Sussex look set for a welcome change to licensing rules, after the district council’s licensing committee backed plans to extend the age limit for electric vehicles from ten years to fifteen.
The proposal follows an eight-week public consultation and will now go before full council for final sign-off. If approved, it would mark the first change to the district’s vehicle age policy in eight years, despite the rules having been reviewed and consulted on three times previously without amendment.
The push for change came from a single driver. Baiju Cherukattu Paily, a licensed private hire driver, approached the council after investing in an electric vehicle, arguing that the existing ten-year limit didn’t give drivers enough time to recover the higher upfront cost of going electric. Councillor Simon Hicks, who supported the proposal, backed that view, pointing out that electric vehicles have fewer mechanical wear points, are cheaper to run, and fit with the council’s net zero ambitions.
It’s a point worth making for any driver weighing up the switch: Mid Sussex would actually be playing catch-up rather than leading the way. Neighbouring authorities including Arun, Adur, Rother, Wealden and Brighton & Hove already operate a fifteen-year limit for electric vehicles, while Chichester has no age restriction on them at all. For drivers currently registered elsewhere in the region, that gap in policy has been a real factor in deciding where to license a vehicle.
If full council approves the change, it would bring Mid Sussex broadly into line with its neighbours and could ease some of the financial pressure drivers face when deciding whether an electric vehicle stacks up over its working life.
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