Bristol cabbie loses licence after child sex abuse image convictions

A Bristol cabbie given a suspended jail term over child sex abuse videos and images has had a request to renew his private hire driver’s licence refused.

City councillors rejected the application after hearing he was convicted by magistrates in May last year of making, possessing and distributing obscene material.

He received a 12-month jail term suspended for two years at Bristol Crown Court in June 2021, along with a five-year sexual harm prevention order and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work and have his phone destroyed.

Bristol City Council public safety and protection sub-committee members, hearing the renewal application in his absence, said the convictions were of the “gravest nature involving child pornography” and that he was on the sex offenders register.

Recently published minutes of the private meeting at City Hall on January 18 said the panel was offered no reason to depart from council policy to refuse a licence to an applicant convicted of a sex offence.

The driver, KS, was originally granted a private hire licence in 2016 when his criminal record was clean.

Avon and Somerset Police started investigating him three years later.

Among the offences he was convicted of in 2021 were possessing three and distributing one category A videos – the most obscene of three levels – making a category B video and possessing six “extreme pornography” videos, the minutes say.