Rugby licenses 156 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 107 hackney carriages and 49 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.
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.
202 driver licences are in force against those 156 vehicles, or 1.29 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Rugby licenses 1.34 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 49 per cent below the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is well below the national midpoint. Where vehicles are this scarce a missed pick-up costs more, because the customer has few alternatives and long memories.
Against its own region the fleet is thinner than typical: the West Midlands median is 2.27 per 1,000 residents.
Town and city demand of this kind is steady rather than spiky, and much of the dependable income comes from contract work: school runs, hospital appointments, account journeys.
Rugby requires a licensed private hire operator to record 7 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: pick-up time, pick-up date, pick-up point, main destination, driver name, driver licence number 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, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to both age and emissions standard and private hire vehicles to both age and emissions standard.
Rugby 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 Rugby, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Rugby 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.
40.4 per cent of the licensed fleet in Rugby is wheelchair accessible — 63 hackney carriages and 0 private hire vehicles.
That is a high accessible share, so an accessible booking is usually servable at short notice — and customers will expect it to be.
Rugby publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Rugby 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: "Both" here, against "Topological" for 65 per cent of authorities.
PHV topographical assessment: "Both" here, against "Topological" for 52 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.
