Wolverhampton Licenses 38,000 Minicabs as Cross-Border Loophole Leaves Passengers in the Dark

Wolverhampton City Council had 37,967 licensed private hire vehicles on its books on 1 April 2026, according to new Department for Transport figures published this week. That works out at 135 vehicles for every 1,000 residents, more than 27 times the England average of 4.9. The council now licenses roughly one in every eight private hire vehicles in the country, while accounting for under 0.5% of the population.

Those vehicles are not carrying Wolverhampton passengers. A driver, vehicle and operator must be licensed by the same council under what the industry calls the “triple licensing lock”, but once that condition is met, the car can legally pick up and drop off fares anywhere in England and Wales. A minicab licensed in the West Midlands can spend its entire working life on the streets of London, Manchester or Liverpool, regulated by a council over a hundred miles from where it actually operates.

The trade calls this licensing shopping, or out-of-area working. It carries no criminal penalty on its own, and the DfT figures cannot prove where any single vehicle spends its shifts. Wolverhampton’s scale and the speed of its growth point to drivers actively seeking out a council with lower fees, faster processing and lighter conditions, then working somewhere else entirely.

App-based booking made this arrangement far easier to run at scale than it ever was in the days of a driver ringing a local minicab office. An operator can allocate pre-booked jobs across a huge area without any real link between the driver, the operator and the council area that licensed them, which is exactly the flexibility that also makes licensing shopping practical for the first time on this scale.

Why Passengers End Up Paying the Price

Take a family booking an evening minicab home from a night out in a city centre. The car that turns up carries a licence plate from a council two hundred miles away. Everything about the booking looked normal: an app, a driver photo, a registration number. What the passenger cannot see is whether that driver passed the enhanced background checks, safeguarding training or local knowledge test that their own city requires. None of those checks were ever the responsibility of anyone nearby.

A Fleet Bigger Than Most Cities Combined

Wolverhampton’s private hire fleet grew by 8,794 vehicles in two years, up 30% from 29,173 in 2024. No other authority comes close. For its fleet to match the national average, Wolverhampton would license around 1,391 vehicles rather than almost 38,000.

Other councils show the same pattern on a smaller scale. Knowsley’s fleet more than doubled, rising 135% to 4,917 vehicles, a rate of 30.2 per 1,000 residents, more than six times the national average. East Cambridgeshire’s fleet rose from 163 vehicles in 2024 to 2,785 in 2026, an increase of over 1,600% for a population of roughly 92,900. Sefton licensed 5,724 vehicles, up from 4,996, a rate of 20 per 1,000 residents and four times the national average. Bradford licensed 6,698, Oldham more than doubled its fleet to 2,800, and Hertsmere’s total climbed from 224 to 865 vehicles, a rise of 286%.

Not every high-density council fits the same story. Areas near major airports, such as Uttlesford near Stansted and Solihull near Birmingham Airport, or large regional centres such as Newcastle, generate real demand that outstrips their resident population. The DfT data cannot separate legitimate cross-boundary work from applications made purely to exploit a cheaper, faster licensing regime elsewhere. Wolverhampton’s scale, and the pace at which it has grown, sets it apart from anywhere with an obvious local explanation.

The shift has been building for a decade. PHV numbers nationally have climbed steadily from around 2015 onward, while the licensed taxi fleet has shrunk every year in the same period. England had roughly 342,300 licensed taxis and PHVs combined in April 2026, 85% more than in 2005, while the traditional taxi fleet fell 7% in the last two years alone to 52,300.

Why a Distant Council Checking Your Driver Should Concern You

Councils set their own rules on top of national minimum standards, covering vehicle age and emissions limits, driver training, medical checks, local knowledge tests, safeguarding and how often a vehicle gets inspected. A driver who cannot meet the standards set by the council where they actually work can apply to a more permissive authority instead and carry on regardless.

Local drivers who do meet the tougher local rules end up competing against vehicles that never had to. A council trying to raise standards, cut emissions or improve wheelchair access in its own area has limited power over a fleet it did not license and struggles to inspect.

Enforcement gets harder too. An officer who stops an out-of-area vehicle can inspect it and pass on information, but the authority holding the driver’s full history, complaints record and the power to suspend or revoke the licence often sits hundreds of miles away. Passengers come off worst. Someone booking a minicab in Manchester or London has no easy way of knowing which council, if any, is actually checking the driver behind the wheel, and no obvious place to send a complaint if something goes wrong.

What the Growth Looks Like Everywhere Else

The national totals show how far the balance has tipped. England had roughly 290,000 licensed PHVs in April 2026, up 13% in two years, against 52,300 taxis, down 7% over the same period. PHVs now make up almost 85% of the country’s 342,300 licensed taxis and PHVs combined. Driver licensing followed the same path: 296,800 PHV-only driver licences, up 13%, against 30,400 taxi-only licences, down 11%. The number of licensed PHV operators grew 17% to 18,900.

Accessibility moved in opposite directions across the two vehicle types. Wheelchair-accessible taxis fell 8% to 28,000, while wheelchair-accessible PHVs rose 15% to 6,400. Taxis still provide most of the country’s wheelchair-accessible licensed vehicles, but that gap is narrowing as the traditional taxi fleet shrinks and PHV numbers climb, a shift with real consequences for disabled passengers who rely on being able to book an accessible vehicle at short notice.

London tells a different story again. The capital’s PHV fleet grew just 1% in two years, to 93,300, while its taxi fleet fell 7% to 13,700. Growth of this scale is overwhelmingly a story about councils outside London, several of which now license far more vehicles than local demand could plausibly explain.

Ministers Want Fewer Councils Doing the Licensing

The Department for Transport opened a consultation in January 2026 on handing taxi and private hire licensing to England’s local transport authorities, cutting the number of licensing bodies from 263 to around 70. Larger, regionally aligned licensing areas are meant to reduce the incentive to shop around and tie licensing decisions more closely to where vehicles actually work.

The House of Commons Transport Committee went further in its June 2026 report, calling for a full rewrite of the legal framework and confirming government plans for a draft Taxi and Private Hire Bill. Reducing the number of authorities would narrow the gaps between them, but it would not, on its own, stop a driver licensed in one region from working almost exclusively in another. Ministers have not committed to a rule forcing drivers to hold a licence where most of their work happens.

How to Fight Back as a Passenger

You cannot change how councils license drivers, but you can protect yourself and add pressure to a system that currently lets this happen.

• Check the plate before you get in. Every licensed taxi and private hire vehicle must display a plate showing the issuing council. If it names an authority nowhere near your journey, take a note of it.
• Only book through a licensed operator. A legal private hire booking must go through an operator licensed by the same council as the driver and vehicle. Street hails or unlicensed apps skip the protections that come with the triple licensing lock.
• Complain to the council named on the plate. Issues with conduct, safety or vehicle condition should go to the licensing authority that issued it, not the council where the journey took place. Most council websites list a licensing team email and phone number.
• Respond to the government consultation. The Department for Transport’s consultation on local transport authorities and taxi and PHV licensing remains open for public comment, and individual responses feed directly into whether reform goes further than reducing the number of councils.
• Report a vehicle working almost entirely outside its licensing area. Councils cannot act on a pattern they do not know about. Local authority licensing teams can investigate and share information with the vehicle’s home council.

Motoring Chronicle has tracked other regulatory gaps that leave the public exposed, including how private parking firms have been given until December to follow their own new rules.

Sources:

• https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/taxi-and-private-hire-vehicle-statistics-england-2026
• https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/new-dft-data-reveals-cross-border-taxi-licensing-hotspots-with-wolverhampton-fleet-nearing-38-000-ve
• https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/private-hire-vehicle-numbers-rocket-by-20-outside-london-while-national-taxi-fleet-continues-to-shr
• https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/local-transport-authorities-and-the-licensing-of-taxis-and-private-hire-vehicles/local-transport-authorities-and-the-licensing-of-taxis-and-private-hire-vehicles