North Yorkshire licenses 1,640 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 777 hackney carriages and 863 private hire vehicles.
The fleet splits fairly evenly between the two trades. That is the awkward middle: drivers move between rank work and booked jobs during a shift, so availability is genuinely uncertain unless something tracks it.
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.
1,908 driver licences are in force against those 1,640 vehicles, or 1.16 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
North Yorkshire licenses 2.63 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 0 per cent above the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is close to the national midpoint, which usually means demand and supply trade places by time of day rather than one dominating.
Against its own region the fleet is thinner than typical: the Yorkshire and the Humber median is 3.47 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.
North Yorkshire 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 a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
North Yorkshire 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 North Yorkshire, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in North Yorkshire can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, 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.
North Yorkshire 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.
6.8 per cent of the licensed fleet in North Yorkshire is wheelchair accessible — 70 hackney carriages and 41 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.
North Yorkshire publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
North Yorkshire departs from the majority answer on 5 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: "Written" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "Written" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
