The city of Wolverhampton Council has issued an increasing number of private hire vehicle (PHV) licenses to applicants from Sheffield between 2020 and 2024, raising questions on licensing practices and regional impacts.
What is quite interesting with this information, is that Uber’s work region which involves The West Midlands and North West of England doesn’t include Sheffield, so if you live in Sheffield and you travel to Wolverhampton for your license and then return to Sheffield you will not be able to work for Uber. This means that people are traveling to Wolverhampton to get their private hire license to work for a local firm or another App-based company that doesn’t have restricted work regions like Bolt.
Taxi Point shared the following: “PHV licenses issued to Sheffield-based applicants rose significantly. In 2020, just 17 PHV licenses were granted, but by 2023, this number had skyrocketed to 231, and in just the first eight months of 2024, 258 licenses were issued and PHV driver badges issued also saw similar growth, with 28 badges issued in 2020 compared to 422 in 2023. This sharp rise highlights the scale at which Wolverhampton has become a licensing hub for Sheffield drivers, despite geographical separation.”
Mark who is on our weekly taxi and Uber Podcast lives in Sheffield and he has stated in the past that Sheffield council has stricter rules and regulations for their private hire drivers which we can only assume is why others are traveling to Wolverhampton to get badged.
