Your Wolverhampton Driver Lives Next Door

When someone hears that their private hire driver is licensed by Wolverhampton, I know exactly what they picture. Someone driving 80 miles from the West Midlands to pick them up. A driver who doesn't know the local roads. An outsider.

The reality is nothing like that. That driver lives on your street. They drop their kids at the same school as yours. They shop in the same supermarket. They just happen to hold a licence issued by a council that isn't the one down the road. And there are very good reasons for that.

I say this as someone who has been on both sides — I'm a licensed private hire driver and I've been the person applying for an operator's licence specifically so we could utilise Wolverhampton-licensed drivers to meet demand. I've been dual-badged, holding both a local licence and a Wolverhampton one at the same time. I've seen this from every angle, and the hysteria around it is, frankly, madness.

The numbers tell you everything

Let's start with the scale of what we're actually talking about. Wolverhampton — a city of roughly 264,000 people — has licensed approximately 50,000 private hire drivers. The number of licensed private hire vehicles has tripled in five years, from around 10,700 in 2020 to nearly 34,000 in 2025. The city now accounts for over 11% of all private hire vehicles in England, with 109 licensed PHVs per 1,000 residents — five times higher than the next highest authority.

And here's the stat that should end the debate about whether this is a local issue: 96% of drivers licensed in Wolverhampton live outside the city. This is not a Wolverhampton problem. This is a nationwide response to a broken system.

Why drivers go to Wolverhampton

People look at those numbers and assume something dodgy is going on. That drivers are cutting corners. That Wolverhampton is handing out badges like sweets. That's not what's happening. What's happening is that local licensing authorities across the country have made it so slow, so expensive, and so bureaucratic to get licensed that drivers are making a rational economic decision.

Take Sheffield, where I live. To get licensed here you need to complete a five-day college course leading to a nationally recognised qualification. Then a separate knowledge test. Then a driving standards test at £75. Then an enhanced DBS check. Then a Group 2 medical. Realistically, you're looking at months before you're on the road.

Wolverhampton? A six-hour training course and a multiple-choice test for £50. An enhanced DBS. A medical. Apply online from anywhere in the country. You can be licensed within weeks.

Now put yourself in the shoes of someone who needs to earn a living. Maybe they've just lost their job. Maybe they're supporting a family. Every week waiting for a licence is a week without income. The maths isn't complicated. You go where you can get on the road fastest and at the lowest cost. That's not gaming the system — that's survival.

Fit and proper is fit and proper

Here's what frustrates me most about this debate. The implication — sometimes said quietly, sometimes said loudly — is that Wolverhampton-licensed drivers are somehow less safe. Less checked. Less legitimate.

That is simply not true.

Every licensing authority in England operates under the same central government guidance on what constitutes a fit and proper person to hold a private hire licence. Councils can choose to go above that baseline, but everyone must meet it. Enhanced DBS checks. Medical assessments. Right to work verification. The fundamentals are consistent regardless of which council issues your badge.

Having been dual-badged, I can tell you something that might surprise the critics: Wolverhampton checked my DBS more frequently than my local authority did. I could see online when my DBS was viewed, and Wolverhampton's name appeared far more often. They run daily checks through their digital systems. Steve Wright, Chair of the LPHCA, makes the same point in his recent article for ProDriver Magazine — Wolverhampton has more late-night compliance officers than most other licensing authorities and maintains standards that are, in many areas, higher than average.

The badge tells you which council processed the paperwork. It tells you nothing about the character, competence, or commitment of the driver holding it.

The real problem nobody wants to fix

The reason Wolverhampton licensing exists at scale is because local authorities have failed to provide an efficient, affordable route to licensing. Full stop. If every council could process a licence in weeks at a reasonable cost while maintaining proper standards, the Wolverhampton phenomenon would not exist.

Steve Wright's article highlights cases where licensing delays hit 10 months pre-pandemic, and during COVID, many authorities stopped processing entirely. Drivers who needed to work had nowhere to turn locally. Wolverhampton filled the gap — not by lowering the bar, but by being competent at processing applications.

The private hire industry doesn't operate in neat local boundaries. Operators work across multiple licensing areas. Demand doesn't stop at a council border. The 2018 proposal to require all journeys to start or end in the licensing authority area — the so-called ABBA rule — was rightly rejected as unworkable, environmentally damaging, and economically destructive.

Reform is coming — and it should

I'm not arguing that the current system is perfect. It clearly isn't. Having 263 separate licensing authorities all doing their own thing, with wildly different standards, timescales, and costs, is not a sustainable model. The system practically begs drivers to shop around.

The good news is that change is genuinely on the horizon. The Department for Transport has an open consultation — closing 1 April 2026 — examining whether licensing should move from hundreds of councils to around 70 local transport authorities. The English Devolution Bill includes provisions for national minimum standards on taxi licensing. The Transport Select Committee has been taking evidence since mid-2025.

National standards would be a welcome development. One consistent set of requirements. One clear definition of fit and proper. A system where drivers don't have to travel to another city just to get licensed at a reasonable speed and cost. That's what the industry needs — not finger-pointing at the drivers and councils who have been making the best of a broken system.

Judge the driver, not the badge

Of course some drivers choose Wolverhampton licensing for reasons beyond pure economics. I'm not naive about that. But the vast majority are ordinary people making a practical decision to earn a living at the best possible cost and the earliest opportunity. They are your neighbours. Your family members. Your colleagues. People who want to work, who have passed every required check, and who are no less professional for holding a badge from a different city.

The next time you get into a private hire vehicle and notice a Wolverhampton licence, don't assume the worst. That driver almost certainly lives locally, has been thoroughly vetted, and chose the most efficient route available to do a job that keeps people moving.

The system needs fixing. The drivers don't.