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09
Feb
‘Drivers have had enough’, says Ripon cabbie after taxi numbers tumble
A Ripon taxi driver has accused the council of ruining the trade after figures showed the number of drivers fell by almost a fifth over the last year.
The number of private hire and hackney carriage vehicles licensed by North Yorkshire Council decreased by 309 from 1,656 in January 2025 to 1,347 in January 2026. This represents a slump of 18.7%.
Richard Fieldman said the figures highlighted how much North Yorkshire Council has damaged the trade. However, the council argues the decline is largely because of a change in the way it records the data.
The council became the licensing authority in 2023 when the district and county councils were abolished.
Since then, it has allowed taxis from outside North Yorkshire to operate in the county and required drivers to make their vehicles wheelchair-accessible. Yet it has not allowed tariffs to rise for three years and now it looks set to increase the cost of hackney carriage licences.
Mr Fieldman said:
Drivers have had enough of the cock-up North Yorkshire have bestowed on the trade since they took over. They have been battered. We are at a point where many are ready to jump ship because of what’s going on at the council. From day one since they started, they have decimated the trade. I’ve been doing it for 33 years and have just about had enough.
Mr Fieldman, who lives in Harrogate but operates out of Ripon, also accused the council of not taking rigorous enforcement action against drivers operating taxis illegally.
'No wonder people can't get taxis'
Councillor Barbara Brodigan, a Liberal Democrat who represents Ripon Ure Bank and Spa and sits on the council’s licensing sub-committee, said it was little wonder people struggled to get taxis at night given the state of the trade.
She said:
People are getting Uber but it is not as tightly regulated as North Yorkshire taxis. We are the most rural county in the country and you can’t get a taxi at night because it’s not worth the while for drivers.
The council needs to listen to the trade more. Richard Fieldman said previously the council's actions would drive people away and he has been proved right.
Cllr Barbara Brodigan
The council said in a statement:
Regarding the figures suggesting that licence numbers have dropped, this is because we identified a number of historic records in former district council systems that needed to be closed. Once these legacy entries were corrected, the reported total reduced, but the actual number of vehicles operating in North Yorkshire has not changed in any meaningful way.
In North Yorkshire, there are 1.1 licensed taxis for every 1,000 people, which places us above more than 50 of the 71 rural authorities (72%) across the country.
It’s also important to note that taxi numbers have been falling nationally since 2017, with England and Wales seeing a 22% reduction over that period. So, while the inaccurate reporting from legacy databases may give a misleading impression of a more significant local decline, the number of taxis would have been expected to fall in line with the national trend.
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