Ashfield licenses 1,137 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 271 hackney carriages and 866 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 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.
2,637 driver licences are in force against those 1,137 vehicles, or 2.32 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.
Ashfield licenses 8.94 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 241 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 East Midlands median is 2.13 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.
Ashfield requires a licensed private hire operator to record 10 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 and vehicle registration.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: name of the booker and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to both age and emissions standard and private hire vehicles to both age and emissions standard.
Ashfield 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 Ashfield, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Ashfield 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.
Ashfield 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.
16.7 per cent of the licensed fleet in Ashfield is wheelchair accessible — 185 hackney carriages and 5 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
Ashfield publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Ashfield departs from the majority answer on 7 of the surveyed licensing policies.
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 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.
