Accessible taxis and private hire vehicles are an essential part of the UK’s transport system. For many disabled people, they’re not simply a convenient way of getting from A to B; they’re often the only practical option for travelling independently, getting to work, attending healthcare appointments, accessing rehabilitation, or staying connected with friends and family.
Yet despite the dedication of many operators and drivers across the country, experiences with accessible taxis and private hire remain inconsistent. Availability varies significantly depending on where you live. Booking a wheelchair accessible vehicle can still feel uncertain. Accessibility standards differ between local authorities. And as the transport sector begins transitioning towards electric vehicles, new questions are emerging about how regulation keeps pace with innovation.
These are exactly the kinds of issues currently being discussed across the sector, and at Open Road Access (ORA) we believe it’s an important opportunity to think about what good should look like for the future of accessible taxis and private hire.
Accessibility is about confidence
One of the themes we hear most often from disabled people isn’t simply that accessible vehicles are unavailable.
It’s uncertainty.
Can I actually book one? Will it arrive? Will it be suitable? Will the driver understand my needs?
That uncertainty changes how people plan their lives.
Reliable, accessible transport isn’t simply about moving between places. It’s about confidence to accept a job interview, attend rehabilitation, visit family or simply make spontaneous journeys without wondering whether transport will become the barrier.
Also Read: ORA Brings Accessible Mobility to Centre Stage at OT Show
What the law currently requires
The Equality Act 2010 already places real duties on drivers of accessible taxis and private hire vehicles. Under section 165, drivers of vehicles designated as wheelchair accessible by their local licensing authority must carry a passenger in their wheelchair, help them safely into and out of the vehicle, carry the wheelchair if the passenger transfers to a seat, and do all of this without charging extra. Each licensing authority is required to maintain and publish its own list of designated vehicles.
On paper, that sounds like a solid foundation. In practice, gaps remain. Wheelchair users who fold their chair and transfer into a vehicle that isn’t on the designated list currently fall outside these protections, and disabled passengers who don’t use a wheelchair have historically had far less legal protection when accessing accessible taxis and private hire than wheelchair users do. Amendments in 2022 strengthened some of these duties and introduced new offences for refusal, but campaigners argue the underlying framework still leaves too much decided locally rather than consistently nationwide.
The postcode lottery is real
This localised approach is at the heart of one of the biggest frustrations disabled people report with accessible taxis and private hire. Across England, roughly 11.5 percent of licensed taxis and private hire vehicles were wheelchair accessible in 2024, but that national figure hides enormous regional variation. In the North East, for example, the proportion sits at around 6 percent, roughly half the national average.
Disabled-led advocacy groups have taken this evidence to the Transport Select Committee, arguing that a national, enforceable licensing framework covering accessibility, training, vehicle standards, and enforcement is needed to end what they describe as a postcode lottery. Part of the problem is cross-border working, where a driver licensed by one local authority with lighter requirements can operate freely in an area with stricter standards, undermining councils that have invested more heavily in accessible taxis and private hire.
Looking beyond today’s system
The existing taxi and private hire system has helped thousands of disabled people travel independently. But transport is changing rapidly, with electric vehicles, new mobility services, digital booking platforms, and new business models.
The challenge isn’t simply adapting existing regulation—it’s ensuring future regulation creates the conditions for accessible transport to become more available, more reliable, and easier to use.
Through our work at Open Road Access, we’ve seen first-hand some of the opportunities that exist when accessible mobility is approached differently. We’ve also encountered practical challenges that highlight how difficult it can be to scale innovative accessible transport models nationally.
The electric vehicle transition
The shift to electric taxis is often framed purely as an environmental win, but for accessible taxis and private hire it’s more complicated than that. Some councils have set targets requiring new hackney carriage licences to be either wheelchair accessible or zero emission, with a small number going further and requiring both by the end of the decade. Government grants of up to fifty thousand pounds are available to help operators purchase electric wheelchair accessible vehicles, which is a meaningful incentive.
But the transition also creates new accessibility questions that have nothing to do with the vehicle itself. Public charging infrastructure is frequently mounted on kerbs for safety reasons, which can make it genuinely difficult for wheelchair users to reach and operate.
Researchers estimate that of the roughly 2.7 million disabled drivers expected in the UK by 2035, up to half will be wholly or partially reliant on public charging because home charging isn’t a realistic option for them. If that infrastructure isn’t designed with disabled users in mind from the outset, the electric transition risks recreating the same postcode lottery in a different form, just at the charge point rather than the taxi rank.
A few local authorities are already trying to get ahead of this. North Yorkshire has proposed that all new hackney carriage licences must be either wheelchair accessible or zero emission, phasing in stricter requirements towards the end of the decade. Cardiff Council ran a procurement scheme letting local taxi operators try zero emission wheelchair accessible taxis for thirty days before committing to buy, specifically to encourage uptake of vehicles that meet both environmental and accessibility standards at once. These are useful examples, but they remain individual council decisions rather than a coordinated national approach, which is exactly the kind of inconsistency that leaves accessible taxis and private hire feeling like a postcode lottery in the first place.
Why this matters to us at ORA
We’re not a taxi or private hire operator ourselves, but flexible wheelchair accessible vehicle hire and accessible taxis and private hire exist to solve overlapping problems, and we’ve learned a lot from trying to scale one nationally. Building a wheelchair accessible fleet that people can trust to turn up, fit their needs, and be driven by someone who genuinely understands the adaptations is harder than it looks from the outside, and it’s exactly the kind of operational detail that policy discussions about accessible taxis and private hire can miss if they focus purely on vehicle numbers.
Confidence, not just availability, is what makes any accessible transport option actually usable day to day. A fleet can grow on paper while passengers still hesitate to book, simply because they don’t trust what will turn up or whether the driver will know what to do. That’s as true for accessible taxis and private hire as it is for hire vehicles, and it’s why we think the future of this sector needs to be judged on trust and consistency, not headline vehicle counts alone.
Also Read: What’s Included In A WAV Rental With ORA?
Some of the questions we’re asking
Rather than arriving with all the answers, we think there are some important questions worth discussing:
- How can we increase the availability of wheelchair accessible vehicles across the country?
- How do we reduce the postcode lottery many disabled people still experience?
- Should accessibility standards be more consistent nationally?
- How can regulation encourage innovation while maintaining passenger safety?
- How do we ensure the transition to electric vehicles improves accessibility rather than creating new barriers?
We’d love your thoughts
- This conversation shouldn’t belong only to policymakers or transport providers.
- It should include disabled people, carers, families, drivers, healthcare professionals, charities and anyone who relies on accessible transport.
- If you could change one thing about taxis or private hire vehicles, what would it be?
- We’ll use the themes we hear to help shape Open Road Access’ future policy work and engagement across the sector.
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