Fresh from its victory in the High Court, the smartphone taxi app Uber is set to operate in Brighton and Hove after being given a temporary licence by councillors.
In a statement, the council told the BBC it was ‘minded to grant a licence for a year from its launch date, yet to be announced’.
The year’s license would test Uber’s ‘commitment to meeting the city's taxi service standards’, councillors said.
The controversial taxi app allows customers to use smartphones with GPS technology to hail cabs and connect to external servers for the calculation of fares
It recently won a High Court battle, when a judge ruled that smartphones did not count as taximeters, meaning the Uber app complies with the law that prohibits taximeters in private hire vehicles in London.
In a statement, Uber said: ‘Over 85,000 people in the [Brighton] area have downloaded and opened the app in the last few months so we're really excited about the potential.’
Uber representatives claimed it was already licensed in 33 council areas in the UK, though not yet operating in all of them.
