Barnsley licenses 445 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 67 hackney carriages and 378 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.
505 driver licences are in force against those 445 vehicles, or 1.13 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Barnsley licenses 1.81 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 31 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 Yorkshire and the Humber median is 3.47 per 1,000 residents.
Demand across a minor conurbation is steady, with contract and account work providing the base and evenings providing the peak.
Barnsley requires a licensed private hire operator to record 9 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: passenger name, time the booking was made, date the booking was made, pick-up point, main destination, driver name, driver licence number, vehicle registration and name of the booker.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: pick-up time, pick-up date and dispatcher name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to no age or emissions standard restrictions and private hire vehicles to no age or emissions standard restrictions.
Barnsley 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 Barnsley, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Barnsley 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.
Barnsley 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.
3.6 per cent of the licensed fleet in Barnsley is wheelchair accessible — 4 hackney carriages and 12 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.
Barnsley publishes a list of designated wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which brings its drivers within section 165 of the Equality Act 2010.
Barnsley departs from the majority answer on 4 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 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.
