Blaenau Gwent licenses 116 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 113 hackney carriages and 3 private hire vehicles.
This is an unusually hackney-weighted area. Rank and hail work dominates, and a dispatch system here has to accept that a driver's most profitable hour may be one where the operator sent them nothing.
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.
115 driver licences are in force against those 116 vehicles, or 0.99 drivers per vehicle. Most vehicles are effectively single-driver, so utilisation is capped by driver hours rather than by vehicle supply.
Blaenau Gwent licenses 1.73 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 34 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 Wales median is 2.49 per 1,000 residents.
Blaenau Gwent 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.
Blaenau Gwent 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 Blaenau Gwent, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Blaenau Gwent 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 and safeguarding training covering child sexual exploitation and county lines is required.
Blaenau Gwent 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.
6.9 per cent of the licensed fleet in Blaenau Gwent is wheelchair accessible — 8 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.
Blaenau Gwent publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Blaenau Gwent departs from the majority answer on 5 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Requires daily PHV roadworthiness checks: "Yes" here, against "No" for 50 per cent of authorities.
Hackney topographical assessment: "Both" here, against "Topological" for 65 per cent of authorities.
PHV topographical assessment: "Both" here, against "Topological" for 52 per cent of authorities.
Disability awareness training for hackney drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 64 per cent of authorities.
Disability awareness training for PHV drivers: "No" here, against "Yes" for 62 per cent of authorities.
