A private hire driver has been refused a licence by South Cambridgeshire District Council after a licensing review panel raised serious concerns about his command of English and his honesty during the hearing.
The council’s Licensing Review Panel considered the application at a hearing on Thursday 6 August 2026, hearing representations from both the applicant and a licensing officer in a private meeting closed to the press and public. The three-member panel, chaired by Councillor Sunita Hansraj, decided on the balance of probabilities that the applicant was not a fit and proper person to hold a private hire driver licence.
According to the published minutes, the panel found the applicant “did not appear to have a sufficient command of the English language to fully comply with the conditions of a private hire driver licence without the support of a third party.” Members also found that the applicant’s oral evidence during the hearing did not correspond with the legislation in force at the relevant time, and concluded that he appeared to have been dishonest in the evidence he gave. Separately, councillors found that the applicant had failed to understand and accurately complete the council’s private hire driver application form. His background check also revealed multiple road traffic offences, alongside what the panel described as several incidents involving a lack of awareness or failure to comply with the law. The applicant has not been publicly named, and the minutes do not detail the specific offences or when they occurred.
The panel’s decision was made with reference to Section 51 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, the Department for Transport’s Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards, and South Cambridgeshire’s own hackney carriage and private hire licensing policy. Those DfT standards were introduced specifically to give licensing authorities a consistent framework for assessing whether an applicant is “fit and proper,” covering everything from criminal record checks to safeguarding awareness — English proficiency sits within that wider fit-and-proper test because a driver needs to be able to communicate clearly with passengers, understand safeguarding guidance, and respond appropriately in an emergency.
This isn’t the only case South Cambridgeshire’s licensing panel has dealt with in recent weeks — the same authority separately refused another private hire application after a driver failed to disclose a conviction connected to an incident in which people were injured, a decision unrelated to this case but a sign of a licensing authority applying its standards firmly across multiple applications in quick succession.
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