Rutland licenses 290 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 32 hackney carriages and 258 private hire vehicles.
Almost the entire licensed fleet is private hire, which may not be hailed or wait on a rank. Every journey has to be pre-booked, so the booking channel and the dispatch system are the business rather than a support function.
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.
435 driver licences are in force against those 290 vehicles, or 1.50 drivers per vehicle. Vehicles are plainly being shared across shifts, which makes clean shift handover and per-driver accounting matter more than raw fleet size.
Rutland licenses 7.05 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 169 per cent above the national midpoint.
Licensed supply sits far above the national midpoint. In a market this saturated the winning operator is rarely the one with the most cars; it is the one whose quoted arrival time is the time that actually happens.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the East Midlands median is 2.13 per 1,000 residents.
Rutland requires a licensed private hire operator to record 12 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 name, driver licence number, vehicle registration, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
This is close to the strictest record-keeping regime in the survey — very nearly every booking field the DfT asks about is mandatory here.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
Rutland 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 Rutland, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Rutland can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, a topographical or navigational assessment must be passed, drivers must meet a minimum spoken and written English standard, safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required and disability awareness training is mandatory.
0 per cent of the licensed fleet in Rutland is wheelchair accessible — 0 hackney carriages and 0 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.
Rutland departs from the majority answer on 2 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
Publishes a wheelchair-accessible vehicle list: "No" here, against "Yes" for 98 per cent of authorities.
