West Suffolk licenses 593 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 250 hackney carriages and 343 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.
635 driver licences are in force against those 593 vehicles, or 1.07 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
West Suffolk licenses 3.25 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 24 per cent above the national midpoint.
Supply is comfortably above the national midpoint, so operators tend to compete on reliability and account work rather than on simply having a vehicle free.
Against its own region the fleet is denser than typical: the East of England median is 2.52 per 1,000 residents.
West Suffolk 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.
West 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.
Before a new driver in West Suffolk 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.
West 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.
22.6 per cent of the licensed fleet in West Suffolk is wheelchair accessible — 30 hackney carriages and 104 private hire vehicles.
That is a moderate accessible share: servable with notice, but not something to promise on demand at peak.
West Suffolk publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
West Suffolk departs from the majority answer on 3 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily hackney roadworthiness checks: "No" here, against "Yes" for 51 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.
