Sadiq Khan has faced fresh criticism after new figures revealed the compensation bill for Transport for London’s taxi and private hire licensing delays has climbed past £7.6 million.
Figures obtained by the Conservatives via a Freedom of Information request show TfL has made 17,972 payments to drivers under its Goodwill Payment Scheme, with the total bill reaching £7,642,120 by mid-June 2026. The scheme was introduced at the start of the year after prolonged delays to licence renewals — caused by the rollout of new processing software combined with recovery from an earlier cyber security incident — left many drivers unable to work for weeks or months at a time.
To qualify, drivers needed to have had a licence renewed between 1 September 2024 and 31 December 2025, have experienced a period without a valid licence, and have passed any mandatory assessments before their previous licence expired. Payments ranged from £300 to £500 depending on individual circumstances, with TfL previously confirming taxi drivers would receive £300 and private hire drivers £310 as a refund of application and grant fees, plus an enhanced £500 payment for those left unable to work for more than seven days.
TfL had previously faced the threat of legal action over what unions described as “significant hardship” caused to private hire drivers during the backlog, with some reporting they’d gone months without income while waiting for renewals to be processed. A TfL spokesperson said the organisation was “very sorry” for the disruption, adding that additional staff had been recruited and short-term licences issued where appropriate to support existing drivers, and that licence renewals were “now in a consistently steady operating position.”
For drivers who went through the backlog, the scale of the final bill — and the nearly 18,000 payments behind it — is a stark illustration of just how widespread the disruption was, even if TfL maintains the situation has now stabilised.
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