Glasgow City Council looks to delay ‘risk-based’ taxi and private hire car inspections to 2027
- Perry Richardson
- 19 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Glasgow City Council is being urged to delay the introduction of a long-planned risk-based inspection regime for taxis and private hire cars until 1 January 2027, after further slippage in the rollout of a new licensing IT system.
A report to the Licensing and Regulatory Committee dated 3 December 2025 recommends members agree to move the go-live date for the risk-based inspection programme for both taxis and private hire vehicles (PHVs) from 1 January 2026 to 1 January 2027.
The change is sought because the new licensing system, which will schedule vehicle inspections, is now expected to be implemented only by the end of September 2026 rather than 2025 as previously planned.
The risk-based regime was first agreed in August 2019 as an alternative to imposing a hard upper age limit on taxis. It is designed to reduce inspection frequency for newer vehicles and increase checks on older ones. The original framework for taxis set one annual inspection for vehicles up to three years old, two inspections per year for vehicles from three to nine years, and three inspections annually for vehicles aged ten years and over.
Glasgow councillors asked to push back new vehicle inspection regime as IT overhaul slips
Implementation has already been postponed several times. Councillors initially approved a start date of 1 January 2023 for taxis. That was later moved to 1 June 2024 to accommodate inspection process changes introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, and at that stage the requirement for the oldest taxis was reduced from four inspections a year to three. In February 2024, the committee agreed to align the taxi inspection regime with a newly agreed PHV regime, with both sectors due to move to the same risk-based structure from 1 January 2025.
For private hire cars, the council decided in September 2023 to shift its age policy from seven to ten years and to introduce a matching risk-based inspection programme from 1 January 2025. Under that model, vehicles up to three years old would have a single annual inspection, those aged four to six would be tested twice yearly, and vehicles seven years and older would face three inspections per year. The committee then voted in August 2024 to reschedule implementation for both taxis and PHVs to 1 January 2026 so that a new licensing system, expected by September 2025, could be embedded first.
The latest report states that since September 2024 licensing officials have been working with the council’s SIIT team and CGI on the new system, but completion is now scheduled for late September 2026. Officers argue that shifting the inspection regime to 2027 would give time for the technology to bed in and for automated scheduling of inspections to operate reliably before the more complex risk-based pattern is switched on.
For operators, another 12-month delay would mean existing inspection arrangements remain in place for at least a further year.
