https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/57/section/48grandad wrote:
I think it was on here somewhere because a few years ago we had a company here that was called XXXXX taxis and they used the same name on their PH vehicles. I complained to the council and put it on here and both gave the same answer. If you run mainly hackney and the word taxi is part of the company name you can use the company name on your PH.
Well the Transport Act section cited by Heathcote seems fairly clear:
Transport Act 1980 wrote:
64 Roof-signs on vehicle other than taxis.
(1) There shall not, in any part of England and Wales outside the metropolitan police district and the City of London, be displayed on or above the roof of any vehicle which is used for carrying passengers for hire or reward but which is not a taxi—
(a) any sign which consists of or includes the word “taxi” or “cab”, whether in the singular or plural, or “hire”, or any word of similar meaning or appearance to any of those words, whether alone or as part of another word; or
(b) any sign, notice, mark, illumination or other feature which may suggest that the vehicle is a taxi.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/34/section/64Note that (1)(a) is specifically about rooflights, while (b) seems to be about other things, but above the roofline.
So that would seem to be a fairly clear ban on PHV rooflights displaying the word 'taxi'.
As for the rest of the vehicle, presumably that's about s.48 of the LG(MP) Act 1976, which states that PHVs can't be "of such design and appearance as to lead any person to believe that the vehicle is a hackney carriage".
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/57/section/48Obviously that's quite vague and each council will vary in their interpretation of that. And I'm not sure if there's any case law etc on it.
But, at a rough guess, and unless there's other relevant legislation, I would say that if Parliament had intended to ban the word 'taxi' from PHVs altogether then that would have been specifically catered for, whereas the Transport Act specifies only what shouldn't be displayed above the roofline.
So, roughly speaking I would say that the word 'taxi' is OK on PHVs, except above the roofline, although I'm sure others will disagree
But if an individual council does interpret s.48 as prohibiting the word 'taxi', then I'm not sure what the relevance of the circuit would be, and whether or not it has HCs - s.48 is about individual vehicles, not any wider context.