The number of taxi drivers licensed in Newcastle-under-Lyme has nearly halved in five years due to 'licence shopping', councillors have been told.

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council introduced its current taxi licensing policy in 2019, and since then the number of drivers registered with authority has fallen from 1,020 to 546 – a 47 per cent drop.

The number of private hire vehicles licensed by the council has fallen from 600 to 385, while the number of Hackney carriages has gone down from 194 to 127.

Members of the public protection committee were told that the decrease in licences issued by the borough council was due to it having tighter rules than other authorities in the area.

Under the current licensing system, drivers are able to gain licences at other councils but still operate in their home area.

The borough council is drawing up its response to the government's consultation on overhauling the national licensing framework, which could see an end to this sort of licence shopping.

Committee members believe the current system means authorities are effectively being 'punished' for having higher standards.

Licensing lead Matthew Burton told the committee that the borough council, in its response to the consultation, would be calling for national standards to apply to all authorities.

He said: "There are some local authorities that have very high standards and some that have very low standards, and many in between. There is a lack of consistency.

"What that means is that individuals are able to 'licence shop', and find the licensing authority that they may be able to get a licence from, when they might not be able to from their home authority.

"We implemented a comprehensive, fit-for-purpose taxi policy in 2019. We've been told on multiple occasions that licence holders leave the authority and new applicants won't apply because our standards are too high.

"Those are standards that have been approved by the committee and we stand by them, but unfortunately applicants go to other authorities, get licences and come back here.

"We've decreased nearly 47 per cent in terms of drivers, which really is a significant amount, when other authorities are having such large increases."

Mr Burton said there is also a need to update licensing rules to make the system less vulnerable to organised crime, with taxi drivers being implicated in child sexual exploitation and county lines gangs in various parts of the country.

Committee chair Joan Whieldon believes the borough council is right to have high standards that protect the public. She said: "While we have the legislation, each authority is able to interpret it in their own way, and you have some that interpret it tightly, and offer greater protection to their residents and visitors, and those who are quite slack and do it so they get more taxi drivers.

"What we try to do, as a committee and as a council, is protect our residents without there being a detriment to our taxi drivers, which is quite a hard line to follow.

"I think it's best to have a good reputation for our taxi drivers, rather than a bad one, which I do know that some neighbouring authorities do have."

Councillor Rupert Adcock said: "We effectively have a system that punishes local authorities that have higher safety standards and rewards those with lower standards, and that's just not right. In our response to the consultation we should set out the minimum standards that we want."

The public protection committee also voted to approve an updated taxi licensing policy, which will come into effect in January. Following a consultation, the council has dropped a proposal to remove door livery from taxis, after it was decided that this would make it too difficult to identify licensed vehicles.

The new licensing policy includes updated rules relating to vehicle criteria and an amendment to the knowledge test.