Flintshire licenses 409 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 2 hackney carriages and 407 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.
At this size the operator is often still on the phones, so anything that removes a keystroke from taking a booking pays for itself immediately.
499 driver licences are in force against those 409 vehicles, or 1.22 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Flintshire licenses 2.63 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 0 per cent above the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is close to the national midpoint, which usually means demand and supply trade places by time of day rather than one dominating.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the Wales median is 2.49 per 1,000 residents.
Flintshire requires a licensed private hire operator to record 8 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, 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: time the booking was made, date the booking was made, 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.
Flintshire 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 Flintshire, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Flintshire can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, a topographical or navigational assessment must be passed and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
7.3 per cent of the licensed fleet in Flintshire is wheelchair accessible — 2 hackney carriages and 28 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.
Flintshire publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Flintshire 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 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.
Disability awareness training for hackney drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 64 per cent of authorities.
Disability awareness training for PHV drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 62 per cent of authorities.
