Ribble Valley licenses 108 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 49 hackney carriages and 59 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 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.
125 driver licences are in force against those 108 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.
Ribble Valley licenses 1.71 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 35 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 North West median is 3.52 per 1,000 residents.
Ribble Valley requires a licensed private hire operator to record 12 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, vehicle registration, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
This is close to the strictest record-keeping regime in the survey — very nearly every booking field the DfT asks about is mandatory here.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to no age or emissions standard restrictions and private hire vehicles to no age or emissions standard restrictions.
Ribble Valley 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.
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 Ribble Valley, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Ribble Valley 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.
5.6 per cent of the licensed fleet in Ribble Valley is wheelchair accessible — 4 hackney carriages and 2 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.
Ribble Valley publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Ribble Valley departs from the majority answer on 4 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Caps hackney carriage licence numbers: "Yes" here, against "No" for 74 per cent of authorities.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
Hackney safeguarding training: "CSA/CSE only" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
PHV safeguarding training: "CSA/CSE only" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
Yes. In the reporting year Ribble Valley refused 0 operator licence applications, suspended 0 and revoked 1.
