Reigate and Banstead licenses 1,225 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 89 hackney carriages and 1,136 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 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.
1,869 driver licences are in force against those 1,225 vehicles, or 1.53 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.
Reigate and Banstead licenses 7.97 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 204 per cent above the national midpoint.
Licensed supply sits far above the national midpoint. In a market this saturated the winning operator is rarely the one with the most cars; it is the one whose quoted arrival time is the time that actually happens.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the South East median is 2.22 per 1,000 residents.
Town and city demand of this kind is steady rather than spiky, and much of the dependable income comes from contract work: school runs, hospital appointments, account journeys.
Reigate and Banstead requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: 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 and vehicle registration.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: passenger name, name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to a maximum vehicle age.
Reigate and Banstead 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 Reigate and Banstead 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.
4 per cent of the licensed fleet in Reigate and Banstead is wheelchair accessible — 25 hackney carriages and 24 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.
Reigate and Banstead publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Reigate and Banstead departs from the majority answer on 9 of the surveyed licensing policies.
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: "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.
