West Northamptonshire licenses 1,653 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 178 hackney carriages and 1,475 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.
1,914 driver licences are in force against those 1,653 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.
West Northamptonshire licenses 3.85 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 47 per cent above the national midpoint.
Supply is comfortably above the national midpoint, so operators tend to compete on reliability and account work rather than on simply having a vehicle free.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the East Midlands median is 2.13 per 1,000 residents.
A dense core with significant rural surroundings means two operations in one — quick town work, and long spurs that tie a vehicle up for the better part of an hour.
West Northamptonshire requires a licensed private hire operator to record 10 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 and vehicle registration.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: 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.
West Northamptonshire 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 West Northamptonshire, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in West Northamptonshire 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.
5.4 per cent of the licensed fleet in West Northamptonshire is wheelchair accessible — 89 hackney carriages and 0 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.
West Northamptonshire departs from the majority answer on 1 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
