Liverpool licenses 3,568 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 1,338 hackney carriages and 2,230 private hire vehicles.
The fleet splits fairly evenly between the two trades. That is the awkward middle: drivers move between rank work and booked jobs during a shift, so availability is genuinely uncertain unless something tracks it.
A fleet this size normally runs several controllers across overlapping shifts, so the handover between them — who has already chased which job — is where service quality is won or lost.
4,101 driver licences are in force against those 3,568 vehicles, or 1.15 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Liverpool licenses 7.18 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 174 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 North West median is 3.52 per 1,000 residents.
Liverpool requires a licensed private hire operator to record 6 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: time the booking was made, date the booking was made, pick-up time, pick-up date, pick-up point and main destination.
That is a middling regime — some fields are mandatory, the rest are left to the operator's judgement.
Not required here: passenger name, driver name, driver licence number, vehicle registration, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to an emissions standard and private hire vehicles to no age or emissions standard restrictions.
Liverpool caps the number of hackney carriage licences it issues, so plate availability rather than demand sets the ceiling on that half of the fleet. Capped areas tend to see plates hold value and change hands, with growth pushed towards private hire, where numbers are not restricted.
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 Liverpool 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.
37.7 per cent of the licensed fleet in Liverpool is wheelchair accessible — 1,338 hackney carriages and 8 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
Liverpool publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Liverpool departs from the majority answer on 4 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Caps hackney carriage licence numbers: "Yes" here, against "No" for 74 per cent of authorities.
Requires daily hackney roadworthiness checks: "No" here, against "Yes" for 51 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.
