BACK TO THE FUTURE: What issues around cross-border taxi and PHV hiring were reported in 2017 and remain now?
- Perry Richardson
- 9 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Cross-border hiring was already distorting local taxi and private hire markets across England by 2017, with its impact varying sharply from region to region, according to a Transport for London (TfL) policy paper submitted to the Department for Transport that year. While London was a major source of concern, TfL stressed that the problem was national in scope, affecting metropolitan centres, rural authorities and airport towns in different but equally damaging ways.
The report defined cross-border hiring as the practice of taxis or private hire vehicles licensed in one authority working wholly or predominantly in another. Although lawful under existing legislation, TfL said the scale and intensity of the practice had grown rapidly due to app-based dispatch systems, creating regulatory blind spots that local councils were powerless to close.
In large metropolitan areas outside London, councils reported sustained inward flows of out-of-area vehicles that undermined local licensing regimes. Southampton City Council told TfL it had seen more than 120 additional vehicles operating in the city that were licensed elsewhere, mainly in London, on top of its own fleet of around 650 private hire vehicles. The council warned this created safeguarding risks, particularly where its own licensed vehicles were required to carry CCTV but out-of-area vehicles were not.
West Midlands authorities raised similar concerns, saying drivers refused licences locally due to violence or sexual offence histories had been able to obtain licences elsewhere and then return to operate in the same urban markets. One authority warned that even harmonising standards across the region would not stop drivers “seeking licences from even further afield” if conditions were perceived as easier, weakening efforts to protect public safety.
Transport for London warned that differing local standards and weak enforcement were fuelling region-specific safety and market failures
In medium-sized towns and unitary authorities, the issue often took the form of sustained market displacement. Doncaster Council reported taxis licensed many miles away operating permanently within the borough, frequently driven by local residents who could not meet Doncaster’s licensing standards. The council cited a case where a driver refused a licence following a police caution for fraud remained licensed by another authority around 100 miles away and continued working exclusively in Doncaster.
Reading Borough Council highlighted how cross-border hiring intensified when app-based incentives were introduced. After Uber was refused an operator licence in Reading, the company launched a “reward area” covering the town in October 2017. Council officers found 144 Uber drivers working in Reading over one weekend, most licensed by TfL. Reading said it had never experienced out-of-area working on that scale before and described legislative change as essential to prevent operators exploiting weaknesses in the law.
Rural and semi-rural authorities faced a different set of pressures. Herefordshire Council told TfL it was being used as a licensing gateway by drivers intending to work in neighbouring Worcestershire, attracted by the absence of a numerical cap on licences. The authority said many applicants had “no intention of driving within our county”, leaving Herefordshire bearing the administrative burden while enforcement issues surfaced elsewhere.
Airport locations emerged as another hotspot. TfL said it had carried out enforcement operations around Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports following complaints of large numbers of London-licensed vehicles operating there.
Northern England provided some of the clearest structural examples back in 2017. In the then long-running Berwick-upon-Tweed and Newcastle case, drivers refused licences in Newcastle successfully obtained licences in Berwick, where standards and fees were lower, before operating back in Newcastle as private hire vehicles. Court rulings confirmed this was lawful. By 2008, Berwick had licensed more than 600 hackney carriage proprietors, despite having little local demand, with the majority living around 55 miles away in Tyneside.
TfL said these patterns illustrated how cross-border hiring could hollow out local controls entirely. Authorities that restricted taxi numbers, invested in enforcement or imposed higher training and vehicle standards found their efforts undercut by neighbouring councils with lighter-touch regimes. This created what TfL described as unfair competition for locally licensed drivers who had paid higher fees and complied with tougher conditions.
Environmental policy added another regional layer. London warned that its zero-emission capable taxi requirement, introduced from January 2018, could be undermined if vehicles licensed in authorities without equivalent standards continued to operate predominantly in the capital. TfL cautioned that cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds risked facing similar problems as they developed clean air policies of their own.
Across all regions, enforcement limitations were consistent. Local licensing officers had no powers over out-of-area vehicles, leaving police forces to deal with offences ranging from illegal plying for hire to more serious safeguarding risks. The Metropolitan Police Service told the working group that cross-border hiring was “the single largest risk to policing nationally”, warning that drivers knew they were largely immune from local authority action.
TfL concluded that the regional variation in impacts did not weaken the case for reform but strengthened it. The report argued that only national legislative change, including a start-or-finish requirement, national minimum standards and national enforcement powers, could address the patchwork of problems being reported from London to rural counties.
Without such reform, TfL warned in 2017 that councils would remain locked into a system where licensing decisions taken in one area routinely destabilised safety, enforcement and market conditions in another, with passengers ultimately bearing the risk.
