Uttlesford licenses 1,820 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 38 hackney carriages and 1,782 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 in this range is past the point where one controller sees everything at once, but not yet big enough to absorb a bad half-hour without customers noticing.
1,837 driver licences are in force against those 1,820 vehicles, or 1.01 drivers per vehicle. Most vehicles are effectively single-driver, so utilisation is capped by driver hours rather than by vehicle supply.
Uttlesford licenses 19.66 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 649 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 East of England median is 2.52 per 1,000 residents.
Uttlesford 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, main destination, driver name and driver licence number.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: vehicle registration, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to an emissions standard and private hire vehicles to an emissions standard.
Uttlesford 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 Uttlesford 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.
Uttlesford 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.
21 per cent of the licensed fleet in Uttlesford is wheelchair accessible — 2 hackney carriages and 381 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
Uttlesford publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Uttlesford departs from the majority answer on 2 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily hackney roadworthiness checks: "No" here, against "Yes" for 51 per cent of authorities.
PHV topographical assessment: "No" here, against "Topological" for 52 per cent of authorities.
