Taxi Driver Online

Find it hard to believe that this is total HC numbers in Middlesbrough - no way the total HC sector has contracted this much

So I'd guess there's a legacy saloon HC sector, and it's the later WAVs which have born the brunt of rising costs and competition from Boro Cars and Uber (as someone in the comments suggests - sounds about right).

(Although the original WAV HC number of 150 does seem very high for a scenario like that in a place the size of Middlesbrough - similar size to Dundee, I think.)

(Maybe it's in the article, and I missed it, but can't be bothered reading it again )


Number of wheelchair-accessible taxis in Middlesbrough plummets from 150 to 30 hackney carriages

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/tees ... h-34513476

The 80% drop was revealed in meetings of Middlesbrough Council's licensing committee, with a manager speaking of a 'significant reduction' and decline

The number of wheelchair-accessible taxis in Middlesbrough has plunged from 150 to 30 hackney carriages in the last six years.

The 80% drop was revealed at a meeting of Middlesbrough Council's licensing committee where a taxi driver asked to renew their hackney carriage vehicle licence for a year. The vehicle was due to be taken off the road this year because of council restrictions which usually terminated a wheelchair-accessible vehicle's licence when it was 12 years old.

The driver said the vehicle was still in good working condition and giving a reliable service to passengers, and had a letter of support from a customer who was a wheelchair user. They said "there were growing concerns amongst members of the taxi trade in Middlesbrough regarding the limitations and age restrictions for licensed vehicles imposed by Middlesbrough Council", minutes from the committee meeting show.

The council's licensing manager said officers "were aware that there had been a significant reduction in the number of wheelchair accessible hackney carriage vehicles licensed by Middlesbrough Council – with a decline from approximately 150 vehicles in 2020 to 30 at the present time". The authority was considering a review of its taxi licensing policies including removing the age restriction, councillors heard in the June meeting.

In this driver's case, officers supported a one-year extension of the vehicle licence. The committee granted this, with three vehicle tests during the year.

The licensing committee considered the wider issue at its latest meeting on Monday (August 24), with a new report saying the council currently licensed 32 wheelchair-accessible vehicles, several of which would reach the maximum age in the next year: "Without suitable replacement vehicles being introduced, this is likely to have a significant impact on the availability of wheelchair accessible transport services within Middlesbrough. Officers will be considering a wider review of the council's taxi licensing policies later this year."

It said the council would consider replacing age limits with emission requirements, as many other authorities had done, with "specific exemptions and incentives for wheelchair-accessible vehicles" to support and increase their availability. In the meantime, councillors agreed to let officers decide on future applications to extend the licences of wheelchair-accessible hackney carriages and private hire vehicles on a case-by-case basis.

This would reduce "unnecessary delays and administrative burden" and help "to maintain the availability of wheelchair-accessible vehicles within the licensed fleet pending the outcome of the wider taxi licensing policy review", said the council's report. It would also "provide greater flexibility in responding to the declining number of wheelchair accessible vehicles within Middlesbrough, support the continued provision of accessible transport services for disabled passengers, and ensure that public safety remains paramount through the application of robust inspection and compliance requirements".

Maybe they should tell that Lakes authority from the other day

(Or wherever it was...)

Feel free to correct my arithmetic, but that is an 80% drop, innit?

Anyway, although a case-by-case age rule exemption and maybe a future emissions instead of age criterion might help a little, I doubt if a 12-year age rule was the main reason WAV numbers have plummeted to that degree

Should have just looked up the shiny new DfT stats earlier, but it's sometimes off-putting trying to navigate through those sprawling spreadsheets...

But the info was actually quite easy to find - most of it in the top left corner

Anyway, this is the WAV HC stats for the last three years of stats (with no numbers collated in 2025):

2023 - 49
2024 - 43
2026 - 30

So that's consistent with what's in the article.

However, it's the 'other taxis' column in the spreadsheet which is just as interesting - that would normally mean saloon HCs:

2023 - 186
2024 - 190
2026 - 190

Which is consistent with what I said earlier about the fairly obviously missing HC numbers

Only odd thing is that the the numbers increased from 186 to 190 between 2023 and 2024.

Normally any new plates would go to WAVs, and that number might vary upwards and downwards, but the saloons would normally only stay static, or go down. But not up

So obviously a wee quirk there - might be some sort of post-Covid thing, and plates kept in abeyance but without a vehicle. Or something like that. But obviously in overall terms the numerical difference over the several years isn't significant.

A load of old fanny.

According to the DfT 2018 taxi stats, Middlesbrough had 58 hackney WAVs and zero PH WAVs. (Unlike some, I quite like these stats)

Now, clearly a drop from 58 to 30 is significant, and the costs of the bloody things is the reason, as we all know.

The council can spend months and months trying to find an answer to increase the number of Hackney WAVs, but I can tell them something for nothing; there is no answer.

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IDFIMH

Which, if it had happened years ago, might have ensured more of the older WAVs would still have been licensed.

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IDFIMH

That's interesting, Sussex - I don't have the earlier DfT spreadsheets to hand, and obviously didn't look far enough back.

(And I thought I'd been clever calculating the 80% percentage drop myself [(150-30)/150], but the 80% figure is actually cited in the article twice - how did I miss that

And, if Sussex is right, then it's total bollocks anyway )

I merely typed into Google, DfT taxi stats 2018.

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IDFIMH

Found the official council papers easily enough, and there's no light shed that I can see in the main report:

https://moderngov.middlesbrough.gov.uk/ ... 0658&Ver=4



But there's another document called 'request for delegated authority', which contains this absolute cracker. And which demonstrates that you should never trust official figures like that, as indeed Sussex has already demonstrated.




But, in the round, I think it's safe to simply assume that WAV HC numbers are down significantly because of the usual things

As for the precise stats, forget it