England has more PHV licences that taxis, but that does not explain who or when the vehicles are in operation

A growing number of licensed drivers sounds like good news for anyone trying to book a car. It is however less reassuring for the taxi sector struggling to recruit another driver to service rank for a Saturday night in any given city.

The Department for Transport counted about 417,300 taxi and private hire driver licences in England on 1 April 2026, nine per cent more than in 2024. It counted licences, however, not a roster of people actively taking fares.

The categories moved in different directions. Taxi-only driver licences fell by 11% compared with 2024, to about 30,400. PHV-only licences rose by 13%, to about 296,800. Dual taxi and PHV licences increased by nine per cent, to about 84,700.

The vehicle figures tell a similar, though separate, story. England had about 52,300 licensed taxis, down seven per cent from 2024, and 290,000 licensed PHVs, up 13%. A vehicle licence is not proof that a car is available for hire on a particular shift.

Those numbers describe a change in the licensed market. They do not, by themselves, establish why an individual chose private hire over taxi work, whether the choice was profitable or just easy or whether local passengers experienced shorter waits.

One reason for caution is that some drivers hold licences outside of where they predominantly work. The Department explicitly warns that its number of driver licences does not equate directly to the number of licensed drivers in any given area.

Nor does the snapshot show hours worked. A licence may belong to a full-time driver, somebody who works occasional weekends or a person who has stopped taking bookings but has not yet let the licence expire.

Geography presents another limit. A PHV licensed by one council may work predominantly elsewhere, so local licensing totals cannot reliably show how many vehicles are serving that council’s residents.

For taxi and PHV operators recruiting drivers, the useful question is therefore more specific than “How many licences exist?” It is how many qualified people are willing to cover the shifts, locations and types of work the business actually needs.

Taxi recruitment has its own requirements. Taxis can accept immediate street and rank hires, so the Department for Transport recommends an appropriate local topographical knowledge test for new taxi drivers. PHVs are pre-booked through an operator, allowing the route to be prepared before the journey.

That does not make one trade simple and the other difficult. It means the routes into work, operating models and investment decisions differ. A prospective driver may compare vehicle costs, licence conditions, access to bookings and the predictability of earnings before applying.

The 2026 figures cannot tell us which of those factors carries the greatest weight. Treating the decline in taxi-only licences as proof of any single cause would go beyond the published data.

Dual licensing also complicates a simple taxi-versus-PHV account. About one in five driver licences in the Department’s 2026 total were dual licences, allowing work across both parts of the trade under the relevant rules.

For a local taxi business, retaining an existing driver may be as important as attracting an applicant. If the driver can earn a better return elsewhere, a badge on the council’s books will not keep the vehicle at the rank.

Councils assessing service provision need evidence beyond licence counts too. Rank observations, passenger waiting times, operator coverage and driver working patterns can reveal shortages that a growing national total conceals.

There is no contradiction between more licences across England and a shortage of available taxis in a particular town at a particular hour. The two statements measure different things.