Wolverhampton Council tightens up license applications because of safeguarding fears

Private hire drivers looking to get licensed in Wolverhampton will now have to attend a meeting in Wolverhampton in person rather than carrying out the whole process remotely.

The move is part of a plan to throttle back on issuing licenses to out-of-town drivers because of ‘safeguarding’ fears. Wolverhampton council fears it could suffer “reputational damage” if any drivers licensed in the city are found to be involved in sex abuse case or similar scandals.

The council has also revealed that it has suspended or revoked thousands of private hire licenses over the past four years as part of ongoing attempts to maintain standards.

It was recently revealed that Wolverhampton Council issued 8,563 new private hire driver’s licences in the first five months of this year, as increasing numbers of drivers choose to get licensed there rather than by their local authority.

Wolverhampton has geared up to offer a more efficient service, and the council said it could not refuse applicants because they lived in a different area.

Earlier research showed that around 96% of the licenses issued in Wolverhampton in the 2023-24 financial year were for drivers who lived as far afield as Blackpool and Southampton.

But a report for the council’s Audit and Risk Committee found that as the number of licensees increases, so does the likelihood of a serious issue.

The report said: “There have been serious child sex exploitation scandals revealed in Rotherham and Telford, which involved taxi drivers. “Licensed vehicles provide a ‘camouflage’ which allows vehicles to traffic vulnerable people, as well as the offer of free trips for grooming.”

John Roseblade, director of resident services, told the committee how there were plans to “throttle back the number of applications” the council was receiving. “There used to be a requirement we would visit drivers, now we require drivers to attend Wolverhampton, which is designed to discourage people,” he said.

The 2015 Deregulation Act means the authority was not allowed to turn down applications just because they were from outside Wolverhampton.

The council can only spend funds raised from fees on private hire licensing rather than general expenditure so, to maintain high safeguarding and safety standards, the council is spending the cash on a system which checks every driver’s DBS certificate status every day, airport style facial recognition software to process new applicants and officers carrying out hundreds of safety checks in all parts of the country.

Indeed, City of Wolverhampton Council has revealed that enforcement actions it has taken outside Wolverhampton has resulted in more than 2,600 private hire licenses being revoked between the start of 2020 and the end of the first half of 2024, with a further 8,000 being suspended at some stage during the timeframe.

In 2020, the council suspended 1,031 licenses, while 417 were revoked. In 2021, the there were 1,028 suspensions but revocations dropped to 292. Since then the numbers have been rising, with 1,554 suspensions and 471 revocations in 2022 and 2,381 suspensions and 732 revocations in 2023.

The number is still rising – in the first half of 2024 2,055 licenses were suspended and 727 revoked.