East Lindsey licenses 392 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 130 hackney carriages and 262 private hire vehicles.
Private hire clearly leads the licensed fleet, so most work arrives pre-booked through a phone line, an app or a web form before any driver moves.
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.
456 driver licences are in force against those 392 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.
East Lindsey licenses 2.71 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 3 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 denser than typical: the East Midlands median is 2.13 per 1,000 residents.
East Lindsey requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, 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: time the booking was made, 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.
East Lindsey 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 East Lindsey can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, drivers must meet a minimum spoken and written English standard and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
East Lindsey 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.
13.8 per cent of the licensed fleet in East Lindsey is wheelchair accessible — 43 hackney carriages and 11 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 Lindsey publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
East Lindsey 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 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.
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.
