Suzy Lamplugh Trust welcomes the Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safety and Road Safety) Act 2022 coming into force today, 27 April 2023, as a milestone towards improving safety across taxi and private hire vehicle licensing.

We have long been campaigning to improve safety across driver licensing and mandating information sharing across licensing authorities as set out in the Act will improve their access to all relevant information to decide if a driver meets licensing safety requirements. We hope this important step will pave the way to introducing a single consolidated legislative framework throughout England and Wales outlining clear and specific minimum standards for licensing taxi and private hire vehicle drivers to ensure consistency across all licensing authorities, as recommended by the Ministerial Task and Finish Group on Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Licensing. As part of national minimum standards, Suzy Lamplugh Trust strongly recommends the development of a policy that clearly specifies which crimes and behaviours result in revocation of driver licences and is not restricted to convictions but carefully considers the nature of each alleged crime and incident and the potential risk to passengers. Today is an important step but more needs to be done to ensure passengers are not put at risk.

Read our report on driver safety here.
Read the ministerial task and finish group report here.
Read the press release from DFT here.