Taxi dispatch software in the UK: what it does and what to look for

This guide is for owners and managers of UK taxi and private hire firms choosing dispatch software, or wondering whether the system they have is still right. It covers what the software does, the records the law expects, cloud versus on-premise, pricing, and what to test before you sign.

What is taxi dispatch software?

Taxi dispatch software is the system that runs the booking side of a taxi or private hire firm. Every booking goes into it, every job goes out of it to a driver, and the record of who went where stays in it afterwards.

Firms used to do this with a phone, a booking sheet and a controller on the radio. The software takes the booking, prices it from your fare list, saves it with the details your council asks for, sends the job to a driver's phone, tells the passenger, and keeps the history.

You'll also see it called a taxi dispatch system, a booking and dispatch system, or taxi booking and dispatch software. They mean the same thing. Products differ in which parts come in the box, how bookings arrive, and where the system runs.

The Department for Transport counted 19,000 licensed private hire operators in England on 1 April 2026, up from 16,300 in 2024. The same count found 290,000 licensed private hire vehicles and 52,300 licensed taxis.

What are the main parts of a dispatch system?

A full system has nine parts, each with a question to ask.

Not every firm needs every part. A five-car firm doing local pre-books needs a clean booking list, the right prices and a driver app far more than multi-base reporting. The guide to dispatch software for a small fleet goes through what a small firm can leave out.

What booking records does UK law expect the software to keep?

The law expects a record of every private hire booking, made before the journey starts, in the form your licensing authority sets. In England and Wales outside London, that duty comes from section 56 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976.

Section 56 also says you must produce the record when an authorised council officer or a police constable asks, and breaking the section without reasonable excuse is an offence. Your software is where that evidence lives.

The Department for Transport's Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards set out what councils should ask operators to record for each booking:

• the passenger's name
• the time of the request
• the pickup point and the destination
• the driver's name and licence number
• the vehicle registration number
• the name of the person who took the booking, and of the person who dispatched the vehicle

The same standards suggest keeping booking records for at least six months.

London has its own law. Transport for London licenses operators under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, and regulation 11 of the London operator regulations adds two fields: the agreed or estimated fare, and the name of any operator the booking was passed to. Regulation 16 says booking records are kept for twelve months, and driver and vehicle records for twelve months after the driver or vehicle stops being available for your bookings.

Councils add their own licence conditions on top, and there were 263 licensing authorities in England on 1 April 2026. Check a real booking record from the software against your own conditions, field by field. The guide to private hire operator record keeping covers the detail.

Does it matter whether you run taxis or private hire?

Yes, because the two are licensed differently. A private hire vehicle can only do pre-booked work through a licensed operator. A hackney carriage can do pre-books too, but it can also work from a rank and pick up passengers who hail it.

Rutland County Council's licensing page puts the private hire rule plainly: journeys must be pre-booked with the operator, and failure to do so is an offence that invalidates the vehicle's insurance. So a private hire system has no street job. Every job starts as a booking with a time, a pickup and an operator behind it.

Hackney carriages bring a pricing rule of their own. Section 67 of the 1976 Act says a hackney carriage used for a pre-booked job in its district can't charge more than the council's table of fares, worked out from where the passenger's journey starts. West Northamptonshire Council, for example, sets maximum hackney carriage fares, while private hire fares there are set by each operator.

If you run both, the software needs separate tariffs, so a pre-booked hackney job never quotes above the council's table. The guide to hackney carriage vs private hire covers the licensing side.

Can dispatch software pass jobs to another operator?

Yes, when the law allows the transfer and the software records it. Since 1 October 2015, section 55A of the 1976 Act, added by the Deregulation Act 2015, has let a licensed operator sub-contract a booking to another licensed operator, including one licensed by a different council or by TfL in London.

The DfT standards say operators can outsource booking and dispatch but can't pass on the obligation to protect children and vulnerable adults. Your software should show which operator carried out a sub-contracted job. The guide to private hire dispatch software explains the sub-contracting rules in full.

Cloud or on-premise: which kind of dispatch system?

A cloud system runs on the supplier's servers, and you use it through a web browser and the driver app. An on-premise system runs on a computer in your own office. The difference is who looks after the machine, how you pay, and what happens when something breaks.

Cloud dispatch software puts more trust in the supplier, so ask more of them. The National Cyber Security Centre publishes 14 cloud security principles for judging a cloud service, from protecting data in transit to keeping one customer's data apart from another's. Ask which ones a supplier meets, and how.

Your booking records hold passengers' names, phone numbers and addresses, so the supplier handles personal data on your behalf. The ICO says the contract with that kind of supplier must require it to delete or return all the personal data when the contract ends. Ask how you'd get your bookings, customers and drivers out, and in what format, before you sign. The guide to who owns your taxi booking data goes further.

How is taxi dispatch software priced?

Suppliers charge in one of five ways: per vehicle each month, per driver each month, a flat monthly plan covering a set number of cars, a fee per booking, or a licence for an on-premise system. Setup or migration fees and running costs such as text messages, maps and card fees can come on top.

Per-vehicle pricing suits a growing fleet, because you pay for what you run. A flat plan is easier to budget when your fleet is steady. Per-booking pricing follows how busy you are.

Some suppliers publish prices; others only quote after a demo. The guide to what taxi dispatch software costs has published examples and a way to work out your real monthly figure.

How do you choose taxi dispatch software?

Work through these in order:

1. Write down how your bookings arrive today: phone, website, app, WhatsApp, account customers.
2. List every booking record field your licence conditions ask for.
3. Ask each supplier for a real booking record and tick off every field, including who took and who dispatched the booking.
4. Check the driver and vehicle records: licence numbers, expiry dates, and a warning before anything runs out. The guide to driver document expiry reminders shows what good looks like.
5. Book a test job yourself, at a quiet hour and at a busy one, through every channel you'll use.
6. Read the contract for the term, the notice period, price rises, and how you get your data out.
7. Ask what's live today and what's still on the roadmap, feature by feature, and how long set-up takes.

The list of questions to ask a dispatch software supplier turns this into a checklist you can take into the demo.

Where does AI fit in taxi dispatch software?

AI changes the front door more than the back office. A phone agent or chat assistant can take the booking, quote from your price list and save the record, then pass anything unusual back to a person. The records, drivers and prices work as before.

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. The guide to what an AI taxi dispatch system does explains which jobs the AI takes on and which stay with your controller.

What other rules does your booking process have to follow?

Two more laws touch the way bookings are taken, and a third covers what you send passengers afterwards.

Disabled passengers. Section 167A of the Equality Act 2010, in force since 28 June 2022, 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 has to give. It's a defence that you reasonably had no suitable vehicle. The software should let the office note a wheelchair or an assistance dog on the booking, with no surcharge for either.

Card details. The PCI Security Standards Council, which sets the card industry's data rules, says no payment card data should be stored unless the business needs it, and recommends tools that keep staff from handling card details. A secure payment link sent to the passenger keeps card numbers out of your office and off your call recordings.

Marketing texts. The ICO's rules say you can't send marketing texts or emails to individuals without their consent, unless the "soft opt-in" for your own customers applies. Software that keeps a marketing opt-out on each passenger record makes that easy to follow.