What you pay for a taxi or private hire driver licence still depends mainly on which licensing authority issues it. There is no UK-wide tariff from the Department for Transport. Fees are meant to recover costs, not make a profit, but the published schedules differ sharply once you put them side by side.
How far the gap runs
A comparison covering 318 licensing areas in England, Wales and Scotland, drawn from each authority's own published pages and papers and searchable on TaxiFeed, shows how uneven the driver line still is. Northern Ireland is excluded because taxis there are licensed through the Driver and Vehicle Agency under different rules.
Published three-year driver fees in that set include City of Wolverhampton at £138 for a hackney carriage, private hire or dual badge, rising to £156 under its 2026/27 schedule, against Buckinghamshire at £401 for all driver types. Bolton lists a first application at £669 for three years. Coventry's new-applicant all-in figure is listed at £630 for private hire and £715 for hackney carriage over three years, including tests and training. Transport for London's private hire driver costs are £138 for the application and £205 for the grant of the licence, about £343 for the licence itself, or about £531 in TfL's own example total once DBS and assessments are added, excluding the medical.
Glasgow City Council's fees from April 2026 put a taxi or private hire car driver's licence at £208 for three years. Edinburgh charges £246 for a new one-year driver licence, or £231 to renew for three years.
Those figures are not always like-for-like. Some schedules fold in DBS, knowledge tests or training. Others leave them out. Some only publish a one-year price. Always read the council's own note before comparing.
Search the full fee list
Look up your council, or any other licensing authority, at Licence fees. The searchable list covers published driver, vehicle and operator fee summaries for all 318 areas. Each result links back to the council source where one was published. Fees change. Ambiguous schedules are common. Confirm the figure on the council page before you pay.
What the trade says
The Commons Transport Committee heard the same problem described in blunt terms. Andy Mahoney MBE, for the Licensed Private Hire Car Association, said about 2,700 council officers across local authorities each make their own rules, and that this fragmentation was "why we are in such a mess." He also told the committee that some licensing departments can take up to 15 weeks to process a licence, and that the delay itself pushes drivers toward licence shopping.
Andrew Wescott, of operator group Veezu, told the same inquiry that a three-year driver licence cost £138 at Wolverhampton compared with £336 in Portsmouth, and that it was understandable drivers would seek the cheaper option. Professional Driver Magazine argued that if other authorities matched Wolverhampton's investment in digital systems and staffing, licence shopping "could stop immediately".
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council told MPs that current arrangements let drivers seek out licensing authorities with lower standards, easier application processes, lower costs and weaker local enforcement. The National Private Hire and Taxi Association said variation in policies and conditions across authorities confuses the travelling public. Eamon O'Hearn, national officer at the GMB union, argued that a body at the scale of Greater Manchester or Transport for London should in theory be the right size to run an effective system.
The Transport Committee concluded that national minimum standards must not mean low by default, and that the areas left open to local variation should be kept tight enough to reduce the incentive to licence-shop. That report is at publications.parliament.uk.
Taxi versus private hire
On the driver fee alone, many councils charge the same for a hackney carriage badge and a private hire badge. Dual licences are sometimes the same price and sometimes more. Where the bill diverges is often in extras: knowledge tests, local training, vehicle rules and how much enforcement is loaded onto the licensing account.
Other sources
TfL private hire driver costs: Transport for London
Glasgow fees from April 2026: Glasgow City Council
Edinburgh taxi and PHC fees: City of Edinburgh Council
Search every licensing area on TaxiFeed: Licence fees