Neath Port Talbot licenses 271 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 201 hackney carriages and 70 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.
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.
278 driver licences are in force against those 271 vehicles, or 1.03 drivers per vehicle. Most vehicles are effectively single-driver, so utilisation is capped by driver hours rather than by vehicle supply.
Neath Port Talbot licenses 1.91 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 27 per cent below the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is below the national midpoint, so peak demand routinely exceeds available vehicles. The operational win is honest quoting and declining work you cannot service, not more marketing spend.
Against its own region the fleet is thinner than typical: the Wales median is 2.49 per 1,000 residents.
Neath Port Talbot requires a licensed private hire operator to record 6 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: pick-up time, pick-up date, pick-up point, main destination, driver name and vehicle registration.
That is a middling regime — some fields are mandatory, the rest are left to the operator's judgement.
Not required here: passenger name, time the booking was made, date the booking was made, driver licence number, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to no age or emissions standard restrictions and private hire vehicles to no age or emissions standard restrictions.
Neath Port Talbot 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.
Before a new driver in Neath Port Talbot 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 and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
12.9 per cent of the licensed fleet in Neath Port Talbot is wheelchair accessible — 31 hackney carriages and 4 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.
Neath Port Talbot publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Neath Port Talbot departs from the majority answer on 5 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily hackney roadworthiness checks: "No" here, against "Yes" for 51 per cent of authorities.
Hackney safeguarding training: "No safeguarding" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
PHV safeguarding training: "No safeguarding" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
Disability awareness training for hackney drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 64 per cent of authorities.
Disability awareness training for PHV drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 62 per cent of authorities.
