Our Ref:         FOI-3057-1920

Thank you for your email received on 12 January asking about notifications we have received about from private hire operators regarding serious complaints or driver dismissals.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you require. In your request, you asked for:

In relation to previous FOI request (FOI-2574-1819) it was disclosed, 62 sexual offences / allegations of a sexual offence by private hire drivers in 2018, resulted in a revocation.

Please inform me, of the 62 revocations how many PHV/105 (Notification of complaint or driver dismissal) were received in connection with the sexual offence/allegation of offence and please provide me with a breakdown of private hire operators who submitted.

The FOI request (FOI-2574-1819) that you refer to above was provided on 18 February 2019. At this time the number of revocations recorded for 2018 was 62.

We can now confirm that 74 revocations occurred in 2018. This is due to the status of 12 licences changing since the previous report was created. It is not unusual for the data relating to licensing action to alter over time, as these decisions are subject to an appeal process and a licensing decision may result from an investigation or criminal proceedings that take place after a period of time.

Of the 74 revocations, we received 55 notifications of serious complaint or driver dismissal from private hire operators. Of these, 51 were received from Uber London Limited and one was received from each of Addison Lee, Trident Logistics, Quick Cars and Goldline cars. In at least one case a notification was received from two operators for the same driver.

It is important to note that, where adverse information of a serious nature is received about any licensed driver, appropriate licensing action will be considered at that time. We do not need to wait for the receipt of a notification of serious complaint or driver dismissal from private hire operators.

Please note that we receive information from a wide variety of sources which can lead to the revocation of a driver licence. This includes information from customer complaints, the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and the police.

If this is not the information you are looking for please feel free to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Gemma Jacob
Senior FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London

[email protected]