LICENSING INQUIRY: Councils accuse Wolverhampton of fuelling cross border private hire licensing by allowing out-of-area MOT and onboarding
- Perry Richardson
- 4 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Salford City Council have told MPs that Wolverhampton City Council’s approach to taxi and private hire licensing has “opened up the floodgates” to drivers and vehicles operating hundreds of miles away from the city.
In further written evidence to Parliament, the councils argue that Wolverhampton’s systems and practices have materially accelerated national out-of-area licensing, creating enforcement and safety challenges elsewhere.
The submission notes that a Freedom of Information disclosure showed 9,000 drivers licensed by Wolverhampton City Council are resident in the Greater Manchester area alone. Licensing managers from all ten Greater Manchester districts said this prompted them to submit additional evidence following oral evidence given to MPs on 15 October 2025.
During that session, Wolverhampton’s chief operating officer, David Pattison, told MPs the growth was down to “an efficient system, and because of fees as well… there’s then been a growth”. He added that the council could not lawfully refuse applications from people living elsewhere, stating: “We are not able to say, you happen to live in Berwick-upon-Tweed, or you live in Rochdale, we’re not going to grant you a licence, we would be acting unlawfully”.
Greater Manchester licensing authorities say Wolverhampton City Council’s operational choices, not just the law, have driven the rapid growth in out-of-area taxi and private hire licences.
While accepting that legal position, Greater Manchester councils said Mr Pattison “failed to share important information” about Wolverhampton’s own licensing choices, which they described as “out of kilter with other licensing authorities”. They argue those choices help explain why so many Wolverhampton-licensed drivers and vehicles operate far outside the city.
One example cited is vehicle testing. The submission says many councils require licensed vehicles to be tested within the licensing district, often at council-run or approved garages. Wolverhampton, by contrast, accepts an MOT certificate from “any MOT station in the country”. The councils argue this allows, for example, a vehicle operating in Berwick-upon-Tweed to be licensed by Wolverhampton despite the 220-mile distance, something they say would be impractical under Greater Manchester rules.
Driver onboarding is also criticised where it was noted that other authorities require identity checks and pre-licence training to be completed within the licensing district. Greater Manchester councils say Wolverhampton instead delivered onboarding support and training “in locations around the country”, making it easier for drivers “with no intention to operate in Wolverhampton” to obtain a licence there.
The submission quotes a response from a Wolverhampton licensing manager, which said: “We are genuinely concerned about the environmental impact of people travelling to Wolverhampton from many miles away, so where practicable we support that segment of the trade through convenient MOT stations and training places”. Salford Council said they “respectfully disagree”, arguing the approach actively removed natural barriers to out-of-area licensing.
They also challenge Mr Pattison’s oral evidence where he said: “We don’t want to be in this position, we’ve never asked for this, it’s come to us” and “We have never invited applications from out of area”. The councils said delivering training and onboarding nationwide “surely constitutes inviting applications from out of area” and appears inconsistent with those statements.
As licence numbers increased, the submission says Wolverhampton benefited from economies of scale that allowed it to cut fees and invest in systems, further increasing its attractiveness to drivers working for large, multi-area operators. This, the councils argue, has been a self-reinforcing cycle flagged in the Casey Review, leaving many authorities facing enforcement responsibilities without practical means to manage nationally dispersed licensees.
Greater Manchester councils conclude that simply introducing national standards or reducing the number of licensing authorities will not solve the issue. “The outcome must be licensees licensed locally to where they intend to predominantly operate,” the submission states. The evidence was submitted on behalf of all ten Greater Manchester district councils in December 2025, by Salford Council.
