PASSING THE BUCK
WHEN A LICENSING AUTHORITY SIMPLY REFUSES TO APPLY THE LAW
Article by Christopher Johnson London Cab Drivers’ Club
There is a law. There is consumer law. And in the private hire trade, there is now a documented, on- the-record example of what happens when a licensing authority decides that the second of those simply doesn’t apply to it.
The authority in question is Elmbridge Borough Council. A private hire operator it licenses was found to be recorded, on the council’s own statutory public register, at an address that did not match the address the operator had actually supplied - a discrepancy Elmbridge itself has now conceded.
But the address error, serious as it is, is not the real story. The real story is what happened when the obvious next question was asked: if a private hire operator is a trader in law, and traders are required to disclose their identity and trading address to consumers before they’re bound to a contract, who is checking that operators actually do that?
The answer, it turns out, is nobody. Not because the law doesn’t say so. Because every body with the power to enforce it has decided, in writing, that it’s someone else’s job.
The law is not in dispute
This isn’t a grey area dressed up as one. Regulation 13 and Schedule 2 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, section 68 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and sections 227 and 230 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 all require a trader - and a private hire operator is a trader - to give the consumer its identity and geographical address
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before a booking is confirmed. Regulation 17 of the 2013 Regulations puts the burden of proving compliance on the trader, not the passenger. None of this is contingent on a complaint, a test purchase, or something going wrong. It bites at the invitation-to-purchase stage, before a booking exists at all.
Section 55 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 requires a district council to be satisfied that a private hire operator is fit and proper before granting or renewing its licence. If an operator cannot demonstrate that it meets its statutory consumer- disclosure obligations, the licensing authority has not properly tested fitness and propriety in respect of that operator at all - it has simply not asked the question.
Other authorities have worked out how to close that gap without waiting for new legislation. One council’s Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Licensing Policy already requires operators, as a licence condition, to tell passengers before the booking is confirmed which authority actually licenses the vehicle and the driver fulfilling it - with suspension for non-compliance. A neighbouring authority is now considering the same approach. There is nothing stopping any other authority doing the same under its existing section 55 powers.
What Elmbridge said instead
Elmbridge’s Stage 1 complaint response, dated 8 July 2026, upheld the complaint about the register address. On the substantive point - whether consumer law compliance forms part of its fit and proper assessment - it stated plainly that this does not sit “at the heart of” that assessment, and that it would have regard to consumer law only “in individual circumstances and where relevant.”
SEPTEMBER 2026 PHTM
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