TASK AND FINISH LESSONS IGNORED: Could earlier action have prevented today’s taxi and PHV licensing turmoil?
- Perry Richardson
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
The 2018 Task and Finish Group on Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Licensing set out a clear roadmap for a safer, more coherent and enforceable licensing system across England.
Its recommendations, running from national minimum standards to decisive action on cross border working, were not vague suggestions. They were explicit warnings that the then-current framework was “no longer fit for purpose” and that failure to act would carry consequences for public safety, enforcement capability and industry stability. Those consequences have since arrived almost exactly as predicted.
The report’s first recommendation called for urgent legislative overhaul to replace the outdated patchwork of taxi and PHV laws, some of which date back to 1847. It argued that only a modernised statutory foundation could support the realities of app-based work, mass cross-border movement and differing standards between hundreds of authorities. No such reform followed. Nearly every dispute now facing licensing officers, operators and drivers stems from that inaction.
Among the clearest missed opportunities was the push for national minimum licensing standards for drivers, vehicles and operators, with safety requirements applied universally across England. The report stressed that inconsistent local rules were enabling “forum shopping”, undermining safeguarding and reducing passenger confidence. The same inconsistencies now dominate the licensing inquiry in Parliament, fuel trade anger over out-of-area drivers, and weaken enforcement officers who still face different rulebooks every time a vehicle crosses a boundary.
The 2018 Task and Finish Group warned of many of today’s problems. Seven years on, the same issues dominate the trade.
Cross border working was identified as an urgent structural fault. The report warned that without intervention, licensing would drift towards a national free-for-all, where an authority’s standards become irrelevant once a vehicle leaves its district. It recommended a legal requirement that any taxi or PHV journey must start or end within the area in which the driver (known as ABBA in the taxi industry), vehicle and operator are licensed, with special provisions for specialist sectors. That proposal was never adopted.
The industry now faces precisely the scenario the Group cautioned against: large clusters of remotely-licensed drivers operating full-time in areas with no relationship to their licensing authority, stretching compliance teams and eroding confidence among locally licensed drivers who feel undercut by weaker standards elsewhere.
The Group also highlighted the enforcement vacuum created by fragmented powers. It advised giving licensing authorities the ability to act against any driver or vehicle operating in their area, regardless of where the licence was issued. This was paired with a requirement for drivers to cooperate with compliance officers from other districts. Neither reform materialised. Today, joint operations have become the exception rather than the rule, and officers remain hamstrung by legislation that limits what they can do when encountering an out-of-area vehicle, even if that vehicle poses a safety or compliance risk.
Other recommendations, including mandatory CCTV, compulsory safeguarding training, use of the NAFN refusals and revocations register, and regular DBS checks, were all intended to build a consistent safety culture across England. These, too, have been taken up unevenly, leaving pockets of high-standard authorities existing alongside others whose weaker approach continues to attract licence applicants. In effect, the system has incentivised exactly the behaviour the report warned against.
Perhaps the most striking question is why such a comprehensive, evidence-based set of proposals was left idle. The report drew on the consequences of previous failures in safeguarding, the rise of app-based work, and the rapid increase in PHV numbers in certain authorities. It pointed out that delaying reform “would risk public safety” and that regulating the sector as it actually functioned, rather than as it used to, was imperative.
Despite that clarity, successive governments opted not to legislate. The industry has been left to absorb the fallout: conflict between local authorities, anger between drivers, widening gaps in enforcement, and a public increasingly unsure what licensing actually guarantees.
Had the report’s core recommendations been implemented soon after publication, today’s debate around cross border working, inconsistent standards and stretched enforcement would look entirely different. A national database would already be a mandatory requirement. Minimum safety standards would be non-negotiable. Joint enforcement would be routine. And arguments over “licence shopping” would hold little weight. Instead, the same issues have resurfaced with greater force in 2025, forcing Parliament once again to confront problems that were diagnosed and documented in detail seven years ago.
The big question for today’s policymakers is therefore: if the Task and Finish report was right then, why should its recommendations not be applied now?
