Trafford licenses 1,008 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 71 hackney carriages and 937 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.
A fleet in this range is past the point where one controller sees everything at once, but not yet big enough to absorb a bad half-hour without customers noticing.
1,372 driver licences are in force against those 1,008 vehicles, or 1.36 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Trafford licenses 4.27 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 63 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 North West median is 3.52 per 1,000 residents.
Trafford requires a licensed private hire operator to record 10 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 and vehicle registration.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to both age and emissions standard and private hire vehicles to both age and emissions standard.
Trafford caps the number of hackney carriage licences it issues, so plate availability rather than demand sets the ceiling on that half of the fleet. Capped areas tend to see plates hold value and change hands, with growth pushed towards private hire, where numbers are not restricted.
Daily roadworthiness checks are a condition in Trafford, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Trafford 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.
Trafford also requires a DBS check for the people taking and dispatching bookings, not only for drivers, so office staff sit inside the compliance perimeter too.
7.9 per cent of the licensed fleet in Trafford is wheelchair accessible — 71 hackney carriages and 9 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.
Trafford publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Trafford departs from the majority answer on 6 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Caps hackney carriage licence numbers: "Yes" here, against "No" for 74 per cent of authorities.
Hackney CCTV policy: "No" here, against "Allow" for 92 per cent of authorities.
PHV CCTV policy: "No" here, against "Allow" for 92 per cent of authorities.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
Hackney English-standard requirement: "Oral" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "Oral" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
