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CROSS-BORDER DISTORTION? Taxi and PHV COMPLAINTS ‘league table’ questioned as smaller licensing areas record spikes of passenger concerns
Taxi and private hire complaints are being recorded at sharply different rates across England’s licensing authorities, with new Department for Transport (DfT) figures showing some comparatively small licensing areas receiving hundreds or even thousands of complaints while the country’s biggest licensing centres report much lower complaint-to-vehicle ratios.
The figures, collected for the Department for Transport’s 2026 taxi and private hire vehicle statistics, show London received the largest number of complaints at 5,594. South Gloucestershire was second with 2,166, followed by Birmingham with 1,988 and Solihull with 1,902. Knowsley completed the top five with 1,107 complaints.
However, the headline ranking changes substantially when complaints are considered alongside the number of vehicles licensed by each authority.
That comparison also exposes an important problem with using complaints as a straightforward measure of local taxi and private hire service quality. Vehicles licensed by one council can work elsewhere, passengers do not necessarily know which authority licensed their driver, complaints may initially be made to private hire operators rather than councils, and individual licensing authorities may record and classify complaints differently.
London has most complaints but also by far the biggest fleet
London’s 5,594 complaints look significant in isolation, but Transport for London was responsible for 13,713 licensed taxis and 93,316 private hire vehicles as at 1 April 2026. That produces a combined licensed fleet of 107,029 vehicles.
On that basis, London recorded approximately 5.2 complaints for every 100 licensed vehicles.
The calculation does not mean 5.2% of vehicles generated complaints. One vehicle or driver could be the subject of multiple complaints, while complaints may concern operators or other matters. It is simply a way of comparing complaint volumes against the scale of the licensed fleet.
The contrast with Birmingham is however substantial. Birmingham received 1,988 complaints and licensed 574 taxis and 6,376 PHVs, giving a combined fleet of 6,950 vehicles. That equates to approximately 28.6 complaints per 100 licensed vehicles, more than five times London’s rate on this basic measure.
Leeds recorded 762 complaints against 530 taxis and 4,574 PHVs, a combined fleet of 5,104. Its corresponding figure is approximately 14.9 complaints per 100 vehicles.
Wolverhampton presents an even more striking comparison. It received 1,009 complaints, placing it eighth nationally, despite licensing around 38,000 PHVs and approximately 100 taxis. The DfT says Wolverhampton alone licenses 13.1% of all PHVs in England. Its complaint figure therefore represents only around 2.7 complaints for every 100 vehicles licensed, substantially below London, Birmingham and Leeds.
That does not necessarily suggest Wolverhampton-licensed vehicles generate fewer passenger concerns. Instead, it potentially demonstrates one of the biggest weaknesses in comparing complaints with licensing authority fleet totals.
Is out-of-area working distorting the numbers
Wolverhampton is the clearest example of why the location of a licence cannot be treated as the location where a vehicle works.
The DfT specifically warns that local authority vehicle figures represent vehicles licensed by an authority rather than vehicles operating in its area. Drivers and PHVs can be licensed outside the area where they predominantly work, a practice generally described as out-of-area working.
Wolverhampton had 135.4 licensed taxi and PHVs per 1,000 residents in the 2026 statistics, more than four times the next-highest authority, Knowsley at 31.5. That is driven overwhelmingly by Wolverhampton’s approximately 38,000 PHVs rather than by local taxi provision.
A Wolverhampton-licensed PHV could therefore spend much of its working life carrying passengers in Birmingham, Manchester, London or another licensing area. Simply dividing complaints received by City of Wolverhampton Council by the number of vehicles it licenses risks comparing two populations that are geographically very different.
The reverse problem may apply elsewhere. An authority could receive complaints arising from journeys within its geographical area involving vehicles licensed hundreds of miles away. Whether those complaints are recorded locally, referred to the vehicle’s licensing authority, directed to the operator or never formally registered with a council can materially alter the statistics.
South Gloucestershire and Solihull stand out
South Gloucestershire’s second-place position is particularly notable. The authority recorded 2,166 complaints, only Birmingham and London recorded numbers in the same range.
Its PHV fleet stood at 3,487 vehicles, the ninth largest in the country according to the DfT figures supplied. Even before adding its taxi fleet, its complaint total is high relative to the number of vehicles it licenses.
Solihull shows a similar pattern. It received 1,902 complaints, the fourth-highest number nationally, while licensing 3,318 PHVs. Again, its taxi fleet must be added for a complete vehicle denominator, but the figures still point towards a markedly different relationship between licences and recorded complaints from authorities such as London and Wolverhampton.
Knowsley recorded 1,107 complaints while licensing 4,917 PHVs. Sefton, meanwhile, recorded 777 complaints and licensed 5,724 PHVs.
Those variations are too large to assume that the number of licences issued by an authority is, by itself, determining complaint volumes.
Basingstoke raises another question
Perhaps one of the more surprising results is Basingstoke and Deane, which ranked seventh nationally with 1,022 complaints.
The council said in late 2025 that its total number of licensed hackney carriage and private hire vehicles had reached an all-time high of 492. Even allowing for subsequent fleet growth before the DfT’s 1 April 2026 snapshot, the relationship between the size of the local licensed fleet and the 1,022 complaints recorded warrants closer examination.
Basingstoke and Deane actively encourages passengers to contact its licensing team about driving issues, poor vehicle standards or conduct that could breach licensing conditions. The council says complaints involving public safety or possible breaches of taxi and private hire licensing requirements will be investigated.
That accessibility could itself influence the figures. An authority with a well-publicised, straightforward reporting system could record more complaints than one where passengers struggle to identify the correct regulator.
In other words, a high number of complaints could potentially indicate poor service, but it could also indicate a regulator that makes reporting easier and records a wider range of contacts.
What counts as a complaint matters
The national figures therefore need considerable caution before they are interpreted as a league table of Britain’s worst taxi and private hire services.
The DfT acknowledges more broadly that differences between authorities can reflect variations in local licensing policies and administrative practices, rather than differences in the underlying taxi and PHV sector. Its statistics are compiled from administrative information supplied by individual licensing authorities.
There is also a significant reporting problem further down the chain. The complaints ranking supplied shows 263 authorities with data, while 27 survey returns did not report a complaint figure. The median among authorities reporting data was just 44 complaints, compared with London’s 5,594.
Previous government work has identified difficulties with complaints data. An impact assessment for the statutory taxi and private hire vehicle standards noted that authorities’ management systems did not necessarily capture complaints in a form that allowed detailed categories to be extracted easily. Complaints could be recorded in free-text fields, making consistent analysis difficult.
That distinction matters. A complaint about an alleged serious safety incident cannot reasonably be treated as equivalent to a complaint about customer service, a fare dispute or another relatively minor issue if the purpose is to assess the quality or safety of a local fleet.
Passengers may not complain to the licensing authority at all
There is another major complication: many complaints never reach the authority appearing in the DfT statistics.
Parliament’s Transport Committee reported this year that a passenger’s first point of contact following a taxi or PHV problem is typically the operator, with unresolved cases then potentially escalating to the licensing authority. It also heard evidence that passengers can struggle to determine which licensing authority is responsible when vehicles are licensed outside the area in which they operate.
For private hire in particular, this could create significant differences between areas dominated by large operators with established customer-service systems and areas where passengers are more likely to approach councils directly.
TfL, for example, requires private hire operators to keep records of complaints, investigate them and record the outcome. TfL separately operates a dedicated taxi and private hire investigations team dealing with matters including accessibility, overcharging and driver conduct.
TfL has itself acknowledged that many passengers are unaware it is responsible for taxi and private hire regulation in London. It has also said that problems experienced by disabled passengers are likely to be considerably underreported.
A lower complaint rate can therefore have several interpretations. It might reflect better service. It might reflect journeys taking place outside the licensing area. It might mean passengers complain to operators instead. Or it could simply mean fewer passengers know where or how to make a regulatory complaint.
Complaint figures cannot yet be treated as a service-quality league table
The 2026 results consequently raise as many questions about England’s fragmented licensing system as they do about individual drivers or operators.
England had approximately 342,300 licensed taxis and PHVs on 1 April 2026, comprising 52,300 taxis and 290,000 PHVs. PHV numbers were up 13% from 2024 while taxi numbers fell 7%.
Against that backdrop, complaint data could become an increasingly important regulatory indicator. But comparing authorities meaningfully would require greater consistency over what constitutes a complaint, where the incident occurred, where the vehicle and driver were licensed, whether the complaint was initially handled by an operator, the seriousness of the allegation and how many complaints were substantiated.
Without those measures, the figures cannot establish that passengers in South Gloucestershire, Birmingham, Solihull or Basingstoke receive worse service than passengers elsewhere.
What they do show is a striking disparity. London has the highest absolute number of complaints but, relative to its enormous licensed fleet, its rate is substantially below Birmingham’s. Wolverhampton licenses by far the largest PHV fleet outside London but has fewer complaints than several authorities with a fraction of its licensed vehicles.
The central question is therefore not simply why some councils receive more complaints. It is what those complaints are measuring. They could reveal local service-quality problems, but they may equally expose differences in out-of-area working, operator complaint handling, passenger awareness and the way 263 separate licensing authorities record regulatory information.
Until complaint reporting becomes more standardised and is connected to where journeys actually take place, headline complaint rankings should be treated as an indicator for further investigation rather than a verdict on the quality of a local taxi and private hire trade.
