When Violent Offenders Get Behind the Wheel: The Wolverhampton Taxi Licence Scandal Explained

Imagine booking a cab late at night, trusting that the driver ferrying you home has been properly vetted by your local council. Now imagine discovering that the authority issuing those licences granted them to more than 150 people with convictions for violent offences — in a single year. That's not a hypothetical. That's Wolverhampton, 2025.

A Guardian investigation, using Freedom of Information data, has revealed that Wolverhampton City Council issued taxi licences to dozens of drivers carrying criminal convictions, with over 150 of those convictions relating to violent offences. The findings have sent shockwaves through the taxi and private hire industry, reignited a long-running debate about how councils assess risk, and raised urgent questions about whether passengers — particularly vulnerable ones — are truly protected.

What Actually Happened

The Guardian's FOI request uncovered that Wolverhampton City Council had, over the course of a year, granted hackney carriage and private hire vehicle (PHV) licences to individuals with criminal records, including a significant number with violent offence convictions on file.

To be clear: having a criminal conviction does not automatically disqualify someone from holding a taxi licence in England and Wales. That's not a loophole — it's deliberate policy, designed to allow rehabilitation and prevent blanket discrimination. But the sheer volume of violent-offence cases raises serious questions about whether Wolverhampton's licensing committee is applying the appropriate level of scrutiny, or whether the system has become a rubber stamp.

The data doesn't tell us precisely what those convictions were for, how old they were, or what mitigating circumstances existed. But it does tell us that the council's decision-making is happening largely behind closed doors, without the transparency that passengers arguably deserve.

Why This Matters Beyond One City

Wolverhampton is not an isolated case. It is, however, one of the first councils where the raw numbers have been exposed with such clarity. The broader picture is troubling.

Taxi and private hire drivers occupy a uniquely trusted position. They collect passengers — often alone, often at night, often vulnerable — and transport them in an enclosed space. The safeguarding implications are enormous. This is precisely why taxi licensing exists as a separate, more rigorous regime than, say, a standard driving licence.

Yet the system is administered by over 300 separate local licensing authorities across England and Wales, each operating with significant discretion and no mandatory national database to cross-check whether a driver refused a licence in one area simply applies in another. This fragmentation has been a known problem for years.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation (the Jay Report, 2014) and its follow-ups specifically flagged taxi licensing as a safeguarding weak point in Rotherham and elsewhere. The government's 2019 Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards — commonly known as the Hendry Report recommendations — called for a national register of licensed drivers and a centralised database of those refused or revoked. Years later, implementation remains patchy.

So when Wolverhampton's numbers surface, they're not just a local embarrassment. They're a symptom of a systemic failure that stretches across the country.

The Legal Framework — and Where It Falls Short

Under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 and the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, local authorities have broad powers to grant, refuse, suspend, and revoke taxi licences. The legal test is whether an applicant is a "fit and proper person" — a phrase that sounds robust but is, in practice, remarkably vague.

The Department for Transport's 2020 statutory guidance on taxi and private hire licensing provides a framework for assessing fitness and propriety, including guidance on criminal convictions. It recommends that councils adopt a "relevance test" — assessing whether a conviction is relevant to the role — and a "seriousness test" — considering the gravity of the offence and the time elapsed.

Crucially, the guidance states that certain offences should lead to an automatic refusal unless there are "exceptional circumstances." These include:

• Sexual offences (particularly those involving children)
• Serious violence, including offences involving weapons
• Modern slavery and trafficking
• Terrorism-related offences

The guidance is statutory — meaning councils are legally required to have regard to it — but it is not prescriptive. Councils retain discretion, and that discretion is exercised inconsistently. Some authorities apply very conservative standards; others, it appears, are considerably more permissive.

What's particularly striking in the Wolverhampton case is that violent offences sit in the category where the guidance urges serious caution. A conviction for common assault might reasonably be assessed differently from grievous bodily harm. But over 150 violent-offence convictions approved in a single year suggests that either the council's threshold is very low, or its case-by-case assessment process is not functioning as intended.

There is also the question of enhanced DBS checks. All taxi and PHV licence applicants in England and Wales must undergo an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check. These checks reveal spent and unspent convictions, cautions, and — where relevant — information held by police that has not resulted in a conviction. But a DBS check only surfaces information; it doesn't make the decision. That still falls to the licensing authority, and that's where the gap emerges.

What Passengers and Drivers Should Know

If you're a passenger — or a driver working in the industry — here's what this story means in practical terms.

For passengers:

• You have a right to check a driver's licence. All licensed taxi and PHV drivers must display their licence badge, typically on the dashboard or worn visibly. If in doubt, ask to see it.
• You can verify a driver's licence status with the issuing local authority. Most councils publish a register of licensed drivers online — it's a public document.
• Use licensed operators. Booking through a licensed private hire operator (rather than hailing an unlicensed minicab) adds a layer of accountability. The operator, not just the driver, carries responsibility for your journey.
• If something feels wrong, trust your instincts. You are entitled to refuse a journey and exit the vehicle. In a licensed hackney carriage, you can ask to be let out at any time.
• Report concerns. If a driver behaves inappropriately, report it to both the police and the relevant licensing authority. Licensing decisions can and should be reviewed in light of new information.

For drivers in the industry:

• Your licence can be revoked at any time if the council decides you are no longer a fit and proper person. A new conviction — or even new information about an old one — can trigger a review.
• You have appeal rights. Decisions to refuse or revoke a licence can be appealed to a magistrates' court under the 1976 Act. You have 21 days from the date of the decision to lodge an appeal.
• Transparency cuts both ways. If councils are under pressure to tighten standards, drivers with clean records benefit from a more trusted industry. The reputational damage from high-profile licensing failures affects everyone in the trade.

Looking Ahead — What Needs to Change

The Wolverhampton revelations are likely to intensify pressure on the government to implement the long-delayed national licensing database for taxi and PHV drivers. The 2019 Hendry Report recommended it. The 2020 statutory guidance endorsed it. Successive ministers have nodded along. But the database — which would allow any licensing authority to see whether a driver has been refused or revoked elsewhere — has yet to be fully operational at a national level.

Beyond the database, there is a strong argument for mandatory minimum standards that remove some of the discretion councils currently exercise around violent offence convictions. The current framework allows too much variation between authorities, creating the conditions for "licence shopping" — where drivers refused in one area simply apply to a more permissive council.

There is also a transparency question. Licensing committee decisions in most councils are not routinely published in a form that allows public scrutiny of individual cases. Without that scrutiny, it is very difficult for local journalists, campaign groups, or passengers to hold authorities to account.

The taxi industry itself — through bodies such as the Licensed Private Hire Car Association and the National Private Hire and Taxi Association — has long called for higher national standards. Ironically, responsible operators and drivers have the most to gain from a tougher regime, because it would level the playing field and restore public confidence in a sector that depends entirely on trust.

Wolverhampton's numbers are shocking. But the real scandal is that they are not unique — they are simply the ones we can currently see. Until the government delivers a functioning national register, clearer mandatory standards around serious convictions, and genuine transparency in licensing decisions, passengers across England and Wales are relying on a patchwork system that, in too many places, isn't doing its job.

The question isn't just how this happened in Wolverhampton. It's how many other councils' numbers we simply haven't seen yet.