Private hire dispatch software: what a PHV operator needs

If you hold a private hire operator licence, your dispatch software does more than get cars to people. It's where the council looks to see whether you run the firm within the law. This guide covers the PHV rules that shape what private hire dispatch software has to do, and how to check a system against them before you buy.

Why does private hire need its own kind of dispatch software?

Private hire work is pre-booked by law, and the operator who accepts the booking carries the responsibility for it. A private hire vehicle can't ply for hire in the street or wait on a rank. Rutland County Council's licensing page says journeys must be pre-booked with the operator, and that doing otherwise is an offence and invalidates the vehicle's insurance.

Section 56 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 goes further. It treats every contract for hiring a private hire vehicle as made with the operator who accepted the booking, whether or not that operator provided the car. So the moment your system accepts a booking, the job is legally yours.

London is stricter about where a booking happens. Section 4 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 says a London operator can only accept a private hire booking at an operating centre named in its licence. If you run more than one centre, the system has to show which one took each booking.

The trade keeps growing. The Department for Transport counted 290,000 licensed private hire vehicles in England on 1 April 2026, up 13% on 2024, and 19,000 licensed private hire operators.

What booking records can the council ask to see?

The council can ask to see your record of every booking, made before each journey began. Section 56 says you keep it in the form your council sets in your licence conditions, and produce it on request to an authorised officer or a police constable. Failing to do so without reasonable excuse is an offence.

Here's what the national rules ask for, and where each field should come from in the software:

On how long to keep private hire booking records, the DfT standards suggest at least six months. In London, regulation 16 sets twelve months for bookings, counted from when the booking was accepted, and twelve months for driver and vehicle records, counted from when the driver or vehicle stops being available for your work. Your own licence conditions set the form of the record, so read them alongside this table. The guide to private hire operator record keeping goes field by field.

How should the software keep unlicensed drivers off your jobs?

The software should refuse to give a job to a driver or vehicle whose licence has run out. Section 46 of the 1976 Act makes it an offence for a licensed operator to operate a vehicle as a private hire vehicle unless the vehicle has a current private hire vehicle licence and the driver has a current driver's licence.

So licensed drivers and vehicles are your problem as the operator, not just theirs. Outside London, GOV.UK says the driver licence, vehicle licence and operator licence all need to be issued by the same authority, so the issuing council matters as much as the date. For every driver and every car, the system should hold:

• the licence number and the council that issued it
• the licence expiry date
• the other documents your licence conditions list, such as insurance and the vehicle's test certificate
• a warning to you and the driver before anything runs out, and a block on new jobs once it has

The guide to driver document expiry reminders shows how to set those warnings up.

Can you sub-contract a booking to another operator?

Yes. Since 1 October 2015, section 55A of the 1976 Act, added by the Deregulation Act 2015, has let an operator who accepted a booking arrange for another operator to carry it out, as long as the other operator is one of these:

• licensed by the same council, and accepts the booking in that district
• licensed by another council, and accepts the booking in that district
• a London operator, accepting it at a London operating centre
• accepting the booking in Scotland

Section 55A also says it doesn't matter whether the customer's contract allows you to sub-contract. Section 55B sets the liability: you aren't treated as operating the vehicle yourself, but if the other operator is council-licensed, you commit an offence when you knew it would use an unlicensed driver or vehicle on that job.

You keep the safeguarding duty either way. The DfT standards say operators can outsource booking and dispatch but can't pass on the obligation to protect children and vulnerable adults. When you sub-contract a booking, the software should record which operator took the job and when. London's regulation 11 asks for the sub-contracted operator's name in the booking record itself. The guide to cross-border hiring and sub-contracting covers the cross-border cases.

Who in your office needs to be on the record?

Everyone who takes bookings or dispatches cars. The DfT standards ask operators to keep a register of all staff who take bookings or dispatch vehicles, to keep it for as long as the booking records, and to see a basic DBS check for each person on it. The standards call the register "a living document".

Give each person their own login, so every booking record shows a real name against it. A shared office login defeats the point.

If a booking website, an app or an AI phone agent takes the booking, the record should say which one did.

What do bookings for disabled passengers need?

A booking for a disabled passenger has to be accepted like any other. Section 167A of the Equality Act 2010 makes it an offence for a private hire operator to refuse a booking because the passenger is disabled, or to charge extra for the help the driver must give. The defence is showing it was reasonable to refuse because you had no suitable vehicle.

Set the software up so the office can mark a booking as needing a wheelchair-accessible car or carrying an assistance dog, and so no surcharge can be added for either. The DfT counted 34,500 wheelchair-accessible taxis and private hire vehicles in England in 2026, so know which of your cars can take a wheelchair, and make that a field the system checks.

What should a PHV operator look for in dispatch software?

Run this checklist against any system you're shown:

1. A booking record with every field in your licence conditions, written before the job starts.
2. A time stamp on every booking that the office can't change afterwards.
3. Named logins for every person who takes or dispatches bookings.
4. Driver and vehicle records with licence numbers and expiry dates, and no allocation to an expired licence.
5. A sub-contract record showing which operator carried out a passed-on job.
6. A way to mark accessibility needs on a booking, with no surcharge.
7. An export of your records you can hand to a licensing officer the same day.
8. A contract that keeps the records yours when you leave.

Dispatch AI is booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms. It answers your phone, WhatsApp, texts and emails, books the jobs at your prices and sends them to your drivers on your own app. Whichever system you look at, the wider guide to taxi dispatch software in the UK and the questions to ask a dispatch software supplier will help you test it.