Waverley licenses 235 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 185 hackney carriages and 50 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.
281 driver licences are in force against those 235 vehicles, or 1.20 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Waverley licenses 1.81 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 31 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 South East median is 2.22 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.
Waverley requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, time the booking was made, 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: date the booking was made, pick-up time and pick-up date.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
Waverley 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.
Before a new driver in Waverley 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.
2.6 per cent of the licensed fleet in Waverley is wheelchair accessible — 3 hackney carriages and 3 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.
Waverley publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Waverley departs from the majority answer on 7 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily hackney roadworthiness checks: "No" here, against "Yes" for 51 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.
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.
Disability awareness training for hackney drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 64 per cent of authorities.
