Response to Request for Information
Private Hire Taxi Drivers
This request is being handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please see our responses below marked in blue.
Request
Could you inform me of:
How many Private Hire (PH) licences you have issued by year since 2010? 2010 – 814 2011 – 768 2012 – 674 2013 – 668 2014 – 707 2015 – 829 2016 – 2,923 2017 – 7,711 2018 – 12,194 2019 – 16,103
How many PH licences are current? 17,661
Of those How many PH licences are issued to drivers living in the Wolverhampton (WV) postcode area? 1,185
How many PH licences are issued to drivers residing in other postcode areas, and a breakdown of those areas? Postcode Area Total Bath 1 Birmingham 7394 Blackburn 156 Blackpool 2 Bolton 243 Bradford 31
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday Brighton 4 Bristol 29 Cambridge 70 Canterbury 1 Cardiff 6 Carlisle 1 Chelmsford 2 Chester 5 Cleveland 314 Coventry 1336 Crewe 7 Croydon 6 Darlington 7 Dartford 2 Derby 561 Doncaster 12 Dudley 467 Durham 1 East Central London 1 East London 36 Eastbourne 1 Edinburgh 2 Enfield 3 Exeter 1 Glasgow 4 Gloucester 9 Guildford 2 Halifax 7 Harrow 8 Hemel Hempstead 12 Hereford 6 Huddersfield 10 Hull 2 Ilford 18 Ipswich 2 Kingston Upon Thames 2 Leeds 31 Leicester 929 Lincoln 1
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday Liverpool 4 Llandrindod Wells 1 Llandudno 3 London 2 Luton 42 Manchester 1480 Milton Keynes 11 Newcastle Upon Tyne 1 Newport 5 North London 11 North West London 20 Northampton 27 Norwich 2 Nottingham 734 Oldbury 1 Oldham 546 Oxford 16 Peterborough 25 Portsmouth 2 Preston 7 Reading 8 Redhill 6 Rochester 10 Romford 11 Salisbury 1 Sheffield 105 Shrewsbury 118 Slough 23 South East London 11 South West London 8 Southall 20 Southampton 7 Southend On Sea 2 St Albans 12 Stevenage 5 Stockport 165 Stoke On Trent 232 Sunderland 1 Sutton 5
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday Swansea 5 Telford 248 Tunbridge Wells 2 Twickenham 12 Wakefield 45 Walsall 698 Warrington 26 Watford 4 West London 1 Wigan 5 Worcester 21 York 9
How many applications do you have in progress currently and the drivers residential postcode breakdown? Postcode Area Total St Albans 5 Birmingham 298 Blackburn 15 Bradford 3 Bolton 14 Brighton 1 Cambridge 2 Croydon 1 Canterbury 1 Coventry 60 Crewe 1 Derby 36 Doncaster 3 Dudley 31 East London 2 Blackpool 2 Gloucester 2 Guildford 1 Harrow 1 Hereford 1 Halifax 2 Ilford 3
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday Liverpool 1 Leicester 55 Leeds 3 Manchester 63 Milton Keynes 3 North London 1 Newcastle Upon Tyne 2 Nottingham 37 Northampton 2 North West London 2 Oldham 23 Oxford 2 Peterborough 1 Preston 2 Reading 1 Romford 1 Sheffield 9 South East London 1 Stockport 10 Slough 2 Southampton 1 Stoke On Trent 26 Shrewsbury 3 Telford 4 Cleveland 25 Twickenham 3 Southall 2 Warrington 1 Wakefield 6 Walsall 40 Wolverhampton 59
How many licensing officers deploy to neighbouring areas, such as Birmingham and the frequency/duration of these visits, in the last 2 years? In response to your above question, Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at:
• Section 1(1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held.
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday • The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
In respect of your above question, it has been established following a search of our paper and electronic records, that the information you requested is not held by Wolverhampton Council.
Consequently, we are unable to provide any information relating to the above, and are informing you as required by Section 1(1) (a) of the Act, that states:
"Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request".
How many PH drivers have been subject to discipline or prosecution for not complying with your set down and national regulations/laws? With reference to your above request, your request for information has now been considered and the City of Wolverhampton Council is not obliged to supply the information you requested for the reasons set out below.
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires City of Wolverhampton Council, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you, the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states the fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies:
In relation to your particular request, the following exemption applies:
Section 12 - Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
We can confirm that the Council holds information falling within the description specified in your request. However, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse a request if the cost of providing the information to the applicant would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by the Freedom of Information.
The Regulations provide that the appropriate limit to be applied to requests received by local authorities is £450 (equivalent to 18 hours of work). In estimating the cost of complying with a request for information, an authority can only take into account any reasonable costs incurred in:
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday (a) Determining whether it holds the information, (b) Locating the information, or a document which may contain the information, (c) Retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the information, and (d) Extracting the information from a document containing it.
For the purposes of the estimate the costs of performing these activities should be estimated at a rate of £25 per hour.
The information appertaining to your request is not easily accessible and as such this information is not held as a distinct set able to be retrieved or reported on. To get the information would require a manual trawl into 127,000 individual records x approximately 3 minutes each record.
Please quote the reference number 1376625 in any future communications.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of receipt of the response to your original letter and should be addressed to:
Information Governance Team Governance City of Wolverhampton Council Civic Centre St. Peter's Square Wolverhampton WV1 1SH
Email: [email protected]
If you are still dissatisfied with the Council’s response after the internal review you have a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner, contact details can be found on their website: www.ico.org.uk
City of Wolverhampton Council wolverhampton.gov.uk Civic Centre, St. Peter's Square, Wolverhampton, @WolvesCouncil WV1 1SH WolverhamptonToday