Cardiff licenses 2,008 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 689 hackney carriages and 1,319 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.
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.
2,244 driver licences are in force against those 2,008 vehicles, or 1.12 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Cardiff licenses 5.40 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 106 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 Wales median is 2.49 per 1,000 residents.
Cardiff requires a licensed private hire operator to record 11 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 and dispatcher name.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: name of the booker.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
Cardiff 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 Cardiff can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, a topographical or navigational assessment must be passed, safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required and disability awareness training is mandatory.
16.7 per cent of the licensed fleet in Cardiff is wheelchair accessible — 279 hackney carriages and 56 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
Cardiff publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Cardiff departs from the majority answer on 3 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily hackney roadworthiness checks: "No" here, against "Yes" for 51 per cent of authorities.
Hackney English-standard requirement: "No" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "No" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
