North Kesteven licenses 158 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 41 hackney carriages and 117 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 licensed fleet this small is usually owner-run, and the pressing problem is not allocation but coverage: who answers the phone when the person who normally does is driving.
171 driver licences are in force against those 158 vehicles, or 1.08 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
North Kesteven licenses 1.32 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 50 per cent below the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is well below the national midpoint. Where vehicles are this scarce a missed pick-up costs more, because the customer has few alternatives and long memories.
Against its own region the fleet is thinner than typical: the East Midlands median is 2.13 per 1,000 residents.
North Kesteven requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, date the booking was made, pick-up time, pick-up date, pick-up point, main destination, driver name, driver licence number and dispatcher name.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: time the booking was made, vehicle registration and name of the booker.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
North Kesteven 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 North Kesteven, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in North Kesteven 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 and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
North Kesteven 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.
25.9 per cent of the licensed fleet in North Kesteven is wheelchair accessible — 2 hackney carriages and 39 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
North Kesteven publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
North Kesteven departs from the majority answer on 3 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 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.
