Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of trends in the level of delays in the processing of taxi and private hire driver licence renewals by licensing authorities.

The administration of taxi and private hire vehicle licensing is a matter for individual licensing authorities. The Department does not collect data on the impacts of local licensing processes, but expects authorities to administer them efficiently, with public safety as the overriding priority.