Gwynedd licenses 427 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 363 hackney carriages and 64 private hire vehicles.
This is an unusually hackney-weighted area. Rank and hail work dominates, and a dispatch system here has to accept that a driver's most profitable hour may be one where the operator sent them nothing.
At this size the operator is often still on the phones, so anything that removes a keystroke from taking a booking pays for itself immediately.
458 driver licences are in force against those 427 vehicles, or 1.07 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Gwynedd licenses 3.63 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 38 per cent above the national midpoint.
Supply is comfortably above the national midpoint, so operators tend to compete on reliability and account work rather than on simply having a vehicle free.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the Wales median is 2.49 per 1,000 residents.
Gwynedd requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, time the booking was made, date the booking was made, pick-up time, pick-up date, pick-up point, main destination, driver licence number and vehicle registration.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: driver name, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
Gwynedd does not cap hackney carriage licence numbers, so the fleet can grow with demand. What limits growth is the cost of meeting the standards, not waiting for a plate to come free.
In-vehicle CCTV is permitted but not required here, so it stays an operator decision rather than a licence condition.
Daily roadworthiness checks are a condition in Gwynedd, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Gwynedd can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs checks and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
11.5 per cent of the licensed fleet in Gwynedd is wheelchair accessible — 43 hackney carriages and 6 private hire vehicles.
That is a thin accessible share, so accessible bookings need planning rather than absorbing, and one vehicle off the road materially cuts capacity.
Gwynedd publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Gwynedd departs from the majority answer on 9 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
Hackney topographical assessment: "No" here, against "Topological" for 65 per cent of authorities.
PHV topographical assessment: "No" here, against "Topological" for 52 per cent of authorities.
Hackney English-standard requirement: "No" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "No" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
Hackney safeguarding training: "CSA/CSE only" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
Yes. In the reporting year Gwynedd refused 0 operator licence applications, suspended 1 and revoked 0.
