Rossendale licenses 177 vehicles as at 1 April 2024 — 121 hackney carriages and 56 private hire vehicles.
Hackney carriages lead the licensed fleet, so a meaningful share of driver earnings never passes through a booking channel at all — it comes off ranks and street hails.
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.
232 driver licences are in force against those 177 vehicles, or 1.31 drivers per vehicle. Some vehicles run more than one driver, so shift patterns bear on availability as much as the plate count does.
Rossendale licenses 2.49 taxis and private hire vehicles per 1,000 residents, against a median of 2.62 across the 292 authorities in the same return — 5 per cent below 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 thinner than typical: the North West median is 3.52 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.
Rossendale requires a licensed private hire operator to record 11 of the 12 booking details the DfT surveys: 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.
That is a demanding regime: most of the fields the DfT surveys are mandatory here.
Not required here: passenger name.
On vehicles, hackney carriages are held to both age and emissions standard and private hire vehicles to both age and emissions standard.
Rossendale 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.
Daily roadworthiness checks are a condition in Rossendale, so there is a per-vehicle, per-day record to produce on request.
Before a new driver in Rossendale 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.
1.1 per cent of the licensed fleet in Rossendale is wheelchair accessible — 2 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.
Rossendale departs from the majority answer on 8 of the surveyed licensing policies.
Hackney CCTV policy: "Yes" here, against "Allow" for 92 per cent of authorities.
PHV CCTV policy: "Yes" here, against "Allow" for 92 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.
Hackney safeguarding training: "CSA/CSE only" here, against "Both" for 72 per cent of authorities.
