East Devon licenses 173 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 132 hackney carriages and 41 private hire vehicles.
Hackney carriages lead the licensed fleet, so a meaningful share of driver earnings never passes through a booking channel at all — it comes off ranks and street hails.
A licensed fleet this small is usually owner-run, and the pressing problem is not allocation but coverage: who answers the phone when the person who normally does is driving.
183 driver licences are in force against those 173 vehicles, or 1.06 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
East Devon licenses 1.12 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 57 per cent below the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is well below the national midpoint. Where vehicles are this scarce a missed pick-up costs more, because the customer has few alternatives and long memories.
Against its own region the fleet is thinner than typical: the South West median is 2.14 per 1,000 residents.
The area is largely rural: long journeys, thin return loads, and a standing risk of sending a car twenty minutes out to earn a five-minute fare.
East Devon requires a licensed private hire operator to record 10 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, 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.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: time the booking was made and date the booking was made.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
East Devon 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 East Devon, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in East Devon 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.
East Devon 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.
4.6 per cent of the licensed fleet in East Devon is wheelchair accessible — 1 hackney carriages and 7 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.
East Devon publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
East Devon departs from the majority answer on 3 of the surveyed licensing policies.
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.
