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Uber has lost its licence to operate in London, a major blow given the UK capital is one of the ride-hailing app’s biggest markets globally with some 3.5 million users.

The city’s regulator, Transport for London, said it had identified a “pattern of failures” by the service that put passengers’ safety at risk and has refused to renew Uber’s licence, which expired yesteday. TfL said it found unauthorised drivers using the accounts of real, approved Uber drivers and picking up passengers using vehicles they weren’t registered to drive.

The regulator said these fraudulent drivers had conducted 14 000 trips. All the trips were uninsured, and some of the unauthorised drivers had not been licensed at all by the regulator. In one instance, one fraudulent driver had had their licence revoked.

TfL said it also found drivers who had been suspended from Uber’s platform were still able to create an account and start driving again. It also identified cases where drivers didn’t have the right insurance in place.

The regulator added that Uber had taken steps to fix these issues, but said: “It is a concern that Uber’s systems seem to have been comparatively easily manipulated.”—AFP.