Taxi Licensing Policy Consultation 2025

Have your say on changes to our Taxi Licensing Policy.

The Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Licensing Best Practice Guidance helps local authorities in England regulate taxi and private hire services. It provides advice on making these services safe, accessible, and affordable, covering areas like vehicle standards, driver checks, and protecting vulnerable passengers.

Thurrock Council has updated our Taxi Licensing Policy to reflect recent changes to this guidance.

The updated policy helps us follow the law and national guidelines. It removes vehicle age limits, making it easier to find cheaper vehicles, and reduces how often drivers need medical exams. This saves money for licensed drivers while keeping public safety a top priority.

These updates include:

General

• Added a points-based enforcement system for drivers, operators and vehicle proprietors. Points are given for violations or defects found during inspections or tests, too many points can lead to penalties.

For drivers

• Removed questions from the Private Hire Drivers Knowledge Test, that ask for road names for places of interest in Thurrock.
• Reduced how often drivers need medical exams. This used to be every 3 years, but would now be at the point of licencing, then at 45 years of age and every 5 years after that. From age 65 medicals will be yearly. This is now inline with the DVLA standard.
• Medical evidence will be required for those that cannot carry wheelchairs or assistance dogs before we provide them with a Medical Exemption Certificate.
• Introduced a policy for exempting plates and door stickers for vehicles used solely for executive work e.g. chauffeuring.

For vehicles

• Replaced age standards for licensing private hire and hackney carriage vehicles with emission standards and increased inspection frequency based on vehicle age.
• Allowed private hire vehicles to be licensed for fewer than 4 passengers.
• Allowed MPVs/minibuses to use third-row seats provided they notify passengers in advance that some seats may have restricted access e.g. if other seats must be moved to access the third row.
• Required all vehicles to have secure electronic payment options.