South Holland licenses 207 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 34 hackney carriages and 173 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 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.
238 driver licences are in force against those 207 vehicles, or 1.15 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
South Holland licenses 2.13 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 19 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 denser than typical: the East Midlands median is 2.13 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.
South Holland 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 a maximum vehicle age and private hire vehicles to both age and emissions standard.
South Holland 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 South Holland, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in South Holland can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, drivers must meet a minimum spoken and written English standard and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
11.6 per cent of the licensed fleet in South Holland is wheelchair accessible — 24 hackney carriages and 0 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.
South Holland publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
South Holland departs from the majority answer on 10 of the surveyed licensing policies.
PHV CCTV policy: "No" here, against "Allow" for 92 per cent of authorities.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
Hackney topographical assessment: "No" here, against "Topological" for 65 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.
