Started to glaze over with this one fairly quickly, although one or two interesting points on close inspection
Next steps agreed for another Sunderland taxi fare rise as drivers tell of their one big problem
https://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/pol ... em-5601917
Proposals to increase Hackney Carriage fares on Wearside have taken a key step forward, following a decision by city councillors.
Sunderland City Council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee, at a meeting this week (February 16, 2026), agreed to launch a formal notice period for revised taxi fares.
Under a Hackney Carriage licence, drivers can be flagged down on the street or accessed at taxi ranks, as well as taking on pre-booked work.
Sunderland City Council can prescribe the maximum fares charged across the city, with individual drivers also free to charge less.
Formal bids to increase Hackney Carriage fares have been approved in recent years, including at a meeting in 2022 and further increases were also agreed at a 2023 council meeting, a council meeting in 2024 and again at a council licensing meeting in 2025.
A new request from the Sunderland Hackney Carriage Operators’ Association (SHCOA) aims to increase “some elements of the present Hackney Carriage fares”, a council report states.
This includes a bid to increase fares across the city’s three main tariffs, with tariff one covering largely daytime hours (7am to 11pm), Monday to Saturday and tariff two covering overnight hours seven days a week (11pm-7am) and “all day Sunday”, with both tariffs not including “public and bank holidays and the Christmas / New Year period”.
The city’s third tariff covers the Christmas, New Year and bank holiday periods and applies to “journeys undertaken from 6pm on December 24, to 7am on December 27 and 6pm on December 31 to 7am on January 2 and all day on other public and bank holidays.”
A letter from the Sunderland Hackney Carriage Operators’ Association, published on the city council’s website, sets out the reasons behind the proposed tariff increases and said the changes would represent an average increase of 4.1 per cent.
It was noted that the increased tariffs aim to “address the need to cover our increased operating costs” and that the SHCOA was “carefully considering all other factors and also acknowledging that the present cost of living increase is affecting everybody”.
The letter said it was hoped that the proposal would be “considered reasonable under the prevailing circumstances” and set out some of the challenges the taxi trade is facing.
The letter adds: “The cost of repairs, parts, labour, energy, and taxi insurance premiums continues to rise, and the almost prohibitive cost of a replacement wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) has become a cause for serious concern within the taxi trade nationally.
“The average increase for the three tariffs submitted in the January 2025 application was 2.1 per cent whilst the average increase for the three tariffs with this application is 4.1 per cent.
“According to the National Hackney Fares Table, an average two-mile journey is £7.40 and places Sunderland at 192nd out of 341 local authorities at £7.20 for two miles.
“If the application were to be approved (and there were no increases in any other areas) Sunderland would move to between 157th and 169th in the table at £7.40 for two miles.
“When taking all the above factors into consideration, it is felt that the requested increase is both necessary and justified under the current prevailing circumstances.”
As part of the SHCOA application, no variations were sought for a range of charges including luggage charges, charges for “dogs or other animals” and “fouling of vehicle” charges, with current rates continuing to apply.
Trevor Hines, of the Sunderland Hackney Carriage Operators’ Association, set out the reasons behind the proposed increases at the Licensing and Regulatory Committee at City Hall on February 16, 2026.
The SHCOA letter to the council said that the fares increase proposal followed consultation with “both the representatives of the Independent Hackney Carriage Operators in Sunderland and the Washington operators” and that it had been “agreed by a majority” to make the request to change Hackney Carriage fares.
Mr Hines clarified it would be “wrong to say that all three groups were unanimous” and noted members of the “Sunderland independents” were concerned about competition from Uber and were “very reticent” to increase Hackney Carriage fares.
The SHCOA representative told the meeting that a previous chair of the council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee told the group to come to the panel “on a regular basis with a sensible application”, rather than presenting larger applications for fare increases every couple of years.
Mr Hines continued: “With last year, the average increase was 2.1 per cent and not long after we had quite a rise in inflation and we felt that it sort of cancelled out our increase, so we looked at it this year […] and put in an application this year which we felt was more in keeping to keep us on course for all the prevailing circumstances.
“The biggest problem we have at the moment is the cost of vehicles, especially electric vehicles, and the cost of spare parts and the cost of servicing and repairs, we hear some terrible stories from some operators that the bills are getting phenomenal nowadays […] we certainly find it is greatly affecting us.
“I can list other things but that is the main problem that we have, so this application is supposed to try and help us out to mitigate those costs.”
There were some questions from Sunderland City Council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee aiming to clarify specific elements of the proposed increases across the three tariffs.
This included concerns about some of the percentage increases for longer journey lengths set out in the tariff figures presented to the licensing panel, such as four-mile and five-mile journeys.
However, Mr Hines clarified that the “average journey where we normally calculate the application on is 2-2.5 miles” and added that average journeys tend to be “between 2.5 and three miles [which] is possibly about 90 per cent of our work”.
He also said that Hackney Carriages “don’t have surge pricing” across the three tariffs and that the “fare is what’s on the meter.”
Following discussion of the application and a decision by the council’s Licensing and Regulatory Committee, there will be a statutory notice period allowing for objections to be made.
If no objections to the variations are made, or if all objections made are withdrawn, the variations could come into operation as early as April 1, 2026.
