Sunderland licenses 776 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 321 hackney carriages and 455 private hire vehicles.
The fleet splits fairly evenly between the two trades. That is the awkward middle: drivers move between rank work and booked jobs during a shift, so availability is genuinely uncertain unless something tracks it.
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.
1,139 driver licences are in force against those 776 vehicles, or 1.47 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.
Sunderland licenses 2.80 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 7 per cent above the national midpoint.
Licensed supply is close to the national midpoint, which usually means demand and supply trade places by time of day rather than one dominating.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the North East median is 2.80 per 1,000 residents.
Sunderland 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 a maximum vehicle age.
Sunderland caps the number of hackney carriage licences it issues, so plate availability rather than demand sets the ceiling on that half of the fleet. Capped areas tend to see plates hold value and change hands, with growth pushed towards private hire, where numbers are not restricted.
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 Sunderland, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Sunderland can be sent a job, background screening is enhanced dbs and barred list checks, 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.
Sunderland 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.
24.5 per cent of the licensed fleet in Sunderland is wheelchair accessible — 154 hackney carriages and 36 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
Sunderland publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Sunderland departs from the majority answer on 6 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Caps hackney carriage licence numbers: "Yes" here, against "No" for 74 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: "Written" here, against "Both" for 50 per cent of authorities.
PHV English-standard requirement: "Written" here, against "Both" for 51 per cent of authorities.
