Uber is fighting to survive in London after losing its licence

Uber suffered a major blow Monday after London transportation authorities made a surprise decision not to extend Uber’s taxi operating licence because of persistent safety problems, throwing into question whether the company will be able to continue to operate in the city, its most lucrative European market.

The decision will not immediately affect Uber’s presence on London streets. The company immediately said it would appeal the decision, setting off what could be a lengthy legal process. Uber can continue to operate throughout that time. But the news comes in what has been a difficult year, including a disappointing initial public offering, executive turnover in the company’s highest ranks and continued public scrutiny over the safety of its passengers.

Transport for London, which regulates taxi and private hire services in the city, said Uber did not meet the “fit and proper” standard needed to hold a taxi licence in the British capital. Regulators said Uber had a pattern of failures that placed passenger safety at risk, including breaches where unauthorised drivers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in Uber’s app to carry thousands of riders.

“It is clearly concerning that these issues arose, but it is also concerning that we cannot be confident that similar issues won’t happen again in future,” Helen Chapman, director of licensing, regulation and charging at Transport for London, said in a statement.

The city’s announcement Monday follows a similar decision in 2017, when Uber’s licence was revoked for, among other reasons, poor oversight of drivers. Uber successfully appealed the decision and was granted a 15-month licence after it agreed to more government supervision and to make several policy changes, including how to report incidents to police, keeping tired drivers off the road and naming a new independent board to oversee British operations.

The transport authority said that one of the main issues was a flaw in Uber’s system that let unauthorised drivers sneak onto the platform to carry riders. The drivers sidestepped rules by colluding with authorised drivers to pick up riders under their account. At least 14,000 trips were conducted by unauthorised drivers, London officials said.

Uber said that it notified London regulators about the unauthorised drivers in May and had since applied a technical change to fix the problem. Uber said the behaviour involved 43 drivers.

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