Nottingham licenses 1,486 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 195 hackney carriages and 1,291 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 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.
1,939 driver licences are in force against those 1,486 vehicles, or 1.30 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Nottingham licenses 4.52 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 72 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.
Demand across a minor conurbation is steady, with contract and account work providing the base and evenings providing the peak.
Nottingham 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 point, main destination, driver name, driver licence number, vehicle registration, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: pick-up date.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to both age and emissions standard and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
Nottingham 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 Nottingham can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, a topographical or navigational assessment must be passed, safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required and disability awareness training is mandatory.
Nottingham 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.
13.9 per cent of the licensed fleet in Nottingham is wheelchair accessible — 195 hackney carriages and 11 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.
Nottingham publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Nottingham departs from the majority answer on 6 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.
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.
