Number of private hire/Hackney carriage renewals complete but not granted
Request ID: FOI-3392-2223 Date published: 12 April 2023
You asked
I would like to request the following information:
Since 14/3/2022
1) How many private hire driver licence renewals were made (i.e. prior to the original licence expiring)
2) Of those renewals how many were a) granted, b) refused c) not determined
before the original licence expired?
3) How many drivers have been stopped, investigated, prosecuted or otherwise found to have been working without a valid licence whilst waiting for an application that has been made to be determined?
We answered
Our ref: FOI-3392-2223/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 14 March 2023 asking for information about Private Hire/Taxi licence renewals.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.
Since 14/3/2022 1) How many private hire driver licence renewals were made (i.e. prior to the original licence expiring) 2) Of those renewals how many were a) granted, b) refused c) not determined before the original licence expired?
I can confirm that we do hold the information you require, however, we are only able to readily report on the number of licensed drivers at a given point in time. To answer the questions above we would need to manually check a significant number of private hire vehicle (PHV) driver records to compile the requested information.
Since March 2022 there have been over 30,000 renewal applications, and checking each of these to see if they were made prior to the original licence expiring, and then to compile numbers of those granted, refused or not determined would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with requests if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.
3) How many drivers have been stopped, investigated, prosecuted or otherwise found to have been working without a valid licence whilst waiting for an application that has been made to be determined?
To answer your final question would also exceed the ‘appropriate limit’. In order to answer this, we would need to request, from the Metropolitan Police Service and TfL’s Compliance, Policing and Operations Security, all records relating to those drivers that have been stopped/investigated for working without a valid licence, and then cross reference these to ascertain if they were waiting for their application to be determined. This would take an excessive amount of time.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.
If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt
FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
