Sefton licenses 5,235 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 239 hackney carriages and 4,996 private hire vehicles.
Almost the entire licensed fleet is private hire, which may not be hailed or wait on a rank. Every journey has to be pre-booked, so the booking channel and the dispatch system are the business rather than a support function.
A fleet this size normally runs several controllers across overlapping shifts, so the handover between them — who has already chased which job — is where service quality is won or lost.
5,916 driver licences are in force against those 5,235 vehicles, or 1.13 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Sefton licenses 18.63 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 610 per cent above the national midpoint.
Licensed supply sits far above the national midpoint. In a market this saturated the winning operator is rarely the one with the most cars; it is the one whose quoted arrival time is the time that actually happens.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the North West median is 3.52 per 1,000 residents.
Sefton requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 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, 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: main destination, 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.
Sefton 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 Sefton, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Sefton 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.
2.3 per cent of the licensed fleet in Sefton is wheelchair accessible — 103 hackney carriages and 15 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.
Sefton publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Sefton departs from the majority answer on 8 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 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 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.
