East Suffolk licenses 519 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 63 hackney carriages and 456 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.
At this size the operator is often still on the phones, so anything that removes a keystroke from taking a booking pays for itself immediately.
581 driver licences are in force against those 519 vehicles, or 1.12 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
East Suffolk licenses 2.10 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 20 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 East of England median is 2.52 per 1,000 residents.
A dense core with significant rural surroundings means two operations in one — quick town work, and long spurs that tie a vehicle up for the better part of an hour.
East Suffolk requires a licensed private hire operator to record 10 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, 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.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: time the booking was made and date the booking was made.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to no age or emissions standard restrictions and private hire vehicles to no age or emissions standard restrictions.
East Suffolk 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 East Suffolk, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in East Suffolk 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, safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required and disability awareness training is mandatory.
East Suffolk 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.
6 per cent of the licensed fleet in East Suffolk is wheelchair accessible — 5 hackney carriages and 26 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.
East Suffolk publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
East Suffolk departs from the majority answer on 2 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV topographical assessment: "No" here, against "Topological" for 52 per cent of authorities.
