Wyre licenses 248 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 160 hackney carriages and 88 private hire vehicles.
Hackney carriages lead the licensed fleet, so a meaningful share of driver earnings never passes through a booking channel at all — it comes off ranks and street hails.
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.
393 driver licences are in force against those 248 vehicles, or 1.58 drivers per vehicle. Vehicles are plainly being shared across shifts, which makes clean shift handover and per-driver accounting matter more than raw fleet size.
Wyre licenses 2.16 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 18 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 North West median is 3.52 per 1,000 residents.
The area is largely rural: long journeys, thin return loads, and a standing risk of sending a car twenty minutes out to earn a five-minute fare.
Wyre requires a licensed private hire operator to record 12 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, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
This is close to the strictest record-keeping regime in the survey — very nearly every booking field the DfT asks about is mandatory here.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to an emissions standard and private hire vehicles to an emissions standard.
Wyre 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 Wyre 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.
7.3 per cent of the licensed fleet in Wyre is wheelchair accessible — 4 hackney carriages and 14 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.
Wyre publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Wyre departs from the majority answer on 8 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 English-standard requirement: "Written" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "Written" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
Hackney safeguarding training: "CSA/CSE only" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
PHV safeguarding training: "CSA/CSE only" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
