To drive a taxi or private hire car in England and Wales you need a driver licence from a local council, not from a national body. Each council sets its own requirements, so the answer to “what do I need?” genuinely depends on which borough you apply in — and neighbouring councils can ask for very different things.
This guide sets out what the process involves, using the real published requirements of two Surrey authorities we are licensed with, so you can see how much the detail varies. We are a private hire operator with twelve offices across Surrey and south-west London, and we take on licensed drivers; if you are already licensed and looking for work rather than information, go straight to driver recruitment.
Private hire work rests on three separate licences, and it helps to know which is which before you start.
All three must line up. A licensed driver in a licensed car still cannot legally take a private hire job unless it was booked through a licensed operator — which is why a minicab cannot be hailed in the street and a taxi can.
A hackney carriage — a taxi — can be hailed and can wait on a rank. It runs on a meter set by the council. A private hire vehicle cannot be hailed or wait on a rank; every journey must be pre-booked through an operator, and the price is normally agreed in advance.
The two licences are applied for separately and the tests differ. Most drivers in Surrey work in private hire, because that is where the booked work is: airport transfers, school contracts, account travel and local journeys. If your picture of the job is picking up a hand in the air, that is hackney carriage work, and it is a different licence.
There is no national qualification. What there is, in every authority, is a set of checks you have to pass. The headings below are common to almost all councils; the thresholds inside them are not.
Every authority sets a minimum period for which you must have held a full licence, and the figures differ sharply. Epsom & Ewell requires a full DVLA or EU licence held for three years, and will consider applicants with one to three years’ experience only if they produce an approved driving assessment certificate issued within the last twelve months. Reigate & Banstead asks for a UK or equivalent licence held for at least twelve months, and sets a minimum age of 21.
Two neighbouring Surrey boroughs, the same job, and a two-year difference in the driving experience you need. Check the figure for the authority you intend to apply to before you do anything else.
Private hire driving carries an enhanced criminal record check with the children’s and adults’ barred-list checks, because drivers work unsupervised with children and vulnerable adults. The Department for Transport’s statutory standards expect drivers to be re-checked regularly, which in practice means joining the DBS Update Service so the certificate can be monitored rather than re-applied for from scratch.
The timing matters more than people expect. Epsom & Ewell require the enhanced certificate to be obtained through their nominated provider and registered with the Update Service within one of two windows — 28 days from applying for the check, or 30 days from the date the certificate was issued. Miss both and you pay for a fresh enhanced check.
This is the same standard of fitness required of lorry and bus drivers, and it is the step that surprises most applicants. Both Epsom & Ewell and Reigate & Banstead apply the DVLA Group 2 vocational standard, assessed on the council’s own medical form and completed by your registered GP.
Repeat medicals are scheduled by age: in Epsom & Ewell, every five years from 45 and every year from 65. Specific conditions bring extra paperwork — Reigate & Banstead require applicants with insulin-controlled diabetes to submit a diabetes declaration alongside an independent consultant’s specialist report.
Councils test more than street names. The Epsom & Ewell private hire knowledge test covers the local area, numeracy, spoken English, reading and written comprehension, the conditions attached to the licence, and the Highway Code. Past question papers are published, and a test fee is payable when you book.
The test normally comes after your application and documents have been verified, not before, so there is no point revising until the paperwork is in.
Epsom & Ewell require a certificate showing you have completed their approved child safeguarding course before a licence is granted. This reflects the statutory standards, which are explicit that an operator cannot pass on its obligation to protect children and vulnerable adults — the training sits with the driver as well as the firm. If you want to understand the passenger side of that duty, our guide to children travelling alone in taxis covers the rules drivers are expected to apply.
You will need documentary evidence of your right to work in the UK. If you have lived or worked outside the UK for more than three continuous months since the age of 16, Epsom & Ewell also require a certificate of good conduct from the relevant embassy — worth starting early, because embassies are slow.
Here are the two authorities side by side, taken from their own published requirements. They are neighbours.
Two practical consequences. First, if you are close to a boundary, the authority you choose can decide whether you are eligible at all this year. Second, you cannot mix and match: your driver licence, the vehicle licence and the operator you work through must all sit with the same authority for a private hire job to be lawful.
We hold operator licences with seven authorities — Epsom and Ewell, Reigate and Banstead, Mole Valley, Elmbridge, Guildford, Waverley, and Transport for London — which is why our cars can work across the whole area rather than one borough. You can read more about how that works on our about page.
Epsom & Ewell operate a restricted category many applicants have never heard of: a school run only private hire driver licence. Instead of the full knowledge test, applicants sit a proficiency test that does not examine local area knowledge or numeracy.
It is a narrower licence and it only permits school contract work, but for a driver who wants term-time hours and nothing else — and who would struggle with the full local-knowledge paper — it is a legitimate route in. The safeguarding and DBS requirements are not relaxed, and nor should they be, because school work is precisely where they matter most.
The order of events catches people out, because the test is near the end rather than the beginning.
None of these steps is difficult on its own. The reason applications stall is almost always a document that was not ready — an unregistered DBS certificate, or an embassy letter that nobody started chasing.
A driver licence on its own does not put you on the road. The car has to be licensed too, by the same authority, and it has to meet that authority’s vehicle conditions on age, size, condition and testing frequency. Many drivers rent a licensed vehicle from a fleet rather than licensing their own, precisely because the standard is demanding.
If you are choosing a car to work in, running cost is the decision that outlasts every other. Our guide to hybrid taxis in the UK looks at that choice from the driver’s side rather than the passenger’s.
One thing to be clear about: we are a private hire operator, not a vehicle rental company. We do not rent cars to the public.
Most private hire drivers in Surrey are self-employed and work through an operator. The operator takes the bookings, dispatches the work and handles the account customers; the driver covers the car, the fuel and their own tax. That is the arrangement that gives drivers control over their hours, and it is also the arrangement that makes the maths entirely their own.
What you earn depends far more on which work you take than on how many hours you sit in the car. Airport transfers, school contracts and account journeys behave very differently from short local runs. Our guide to making money as a taxi driver goes into that in detail.
Worth knowing before you spend money on an application.
We are a licensed private hire operator based at the Epsom Clock Tower, with twelve offices across Surrey and south-west London — Epsom, Bookham, Carshalton, Chessington, Ewell West, Godalming, Guildford, Kingston, Reigate, Sutton and Weybridge. Our work is a mix of airport transfers, account and corporate travel, school contracts and local journeys, so there is both early-morning and daytime work on the board.
We take on drivers who already hold a licence with one of our authorities, or with Transport for London. If that is you, our driver recruitment page is the next step. You can also see what we tell passengers about the people who drive for us on the our drivers page.
If you are not licensed yet, nothing on this page is a substitute for your own authority’s published policy. Read it, confirm the figures that apply to you, then come back when you have the badge.
There is no national qualification. You need a driver licence from the local council for the area you will work in, and to get it you must pass that council’s checks: a full driving licence held for a set period, an enhanced DBS check with barred-list checks, a medical to DVLA Group 2 standard, a knowledge test, safeguarding training and proof of your right to work. The thresholds are set by each authority and differ between neighbouring boroughs.
It depends entirely on the authority. Reigate & Banstead require a UK or equivalent licence held for at least 12 months. Epsom & Ewell require three years, or will consider one to three years’ experience with an approved driving assessment certificate issued in the last 12 months.
Reigate & Banstead set a minimum age of 21. Not every authority publishes a minimum age, and where none is published the driving-licence requirement usually sets the floor in practice.
Yes. Both the Surrey authorities covered here apply the DVLA Group 2 standard of fitness — the same standard as lorry and bus drivers — assessed on the council’s own form by your registered GP. In Epsom & Ewell, medicals repeat every five years from age 45 and every year from 65.
In Epsom & Ewell the private hire knowledge test covers the local area, numeracy, spoken English, reading and written comprehension, the conditions attached to the licence, and the Highway Code. Past papers are published and a fee is payable when you book. The test normally comes after your documents have been verified.
A restricted driver licence offered by Epsom & Ewell that permits school contract work only. Applicants sit a proficiency test rather than the full knowledge test, and it does not examine local area knowledge or numeracy. The DBS and safeguarding requirements are unchanged.
Yes, with the children’s and adults’ barred-list checks, because the work is unsupervised with children and vulnerable adults. Epsom & Ewell require the certificate to be obtained through their nominated provider and registered with the DBS Update Service within 28 days of applying for the check or 30 days of the certificate being issued.
Not freely. A private hire driver licence, the vehicle licence and the operator licence must all be issued by the same authority for a job to be lawful. That is why operators working across a wide area, as we do, hold licences with several authorities.
A hackney carriage can be hailed and can wait on a rank, and runs on a council-set meter. A private hire vehicle cannot be hailed; every journey must be pre-booked through a licensed operator, and the price is normally agreed in advance. They are separate licences with separate tests.
Yes, drivers licensed with one of our authorities or with Transport for London. Our driver recruitment page sets out the current position and how to get in touch.
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