Hertsmere licenses 225 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 1 hackney carriages and 224 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 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.
307 driver licences are in force against those 225 vehicles, or 1.36 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Hertsmere licenses 2.08 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 21 per cent below the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is below the national midpoint, so peak demand routinely exceeds available vehicles. The operational win is honest quoting and declining work you cannot service, not more marketing spend.
Against its own region the fleet is thinner than typical: the East of England median is 2.52 per 1,000 residents.
Hertsmere 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 name of the booker.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to both age and emissions standard and private hire vehicles to both age and emissions standard.
Hertsmere 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 Hertsmere, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Hertsmere 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.
Hertsmere 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.
1.3 per cent of the licensed fleet in Hertsmere is wheelchair accessible — 1 hackney carriages and 2 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.
Hertsmere publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Hertsmere departs from the majority answer on 4 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV topographical assessment: "No" here, against "Topological" for 52 per cent of authorities.
Hackney English-standard requirement: "Oral" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "Oral" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
