The Impacts of the Deregulation Act (2015) on Taxi-Related Incidents and Crimes in Leeds

New ride hailing apps, such as Uber and Lift, are disrupting the traditional means by which consumers interact with private hire services. The 2015 Deregulation Act has helped to fuel these changes by effectively allowing drivers to operate in licensing authorities other than those that they have been licensed in.

• This report investigates the changes in ‘taxi-related’ incidents and crime events, using data collected by West Yorkshire Police for the Leeds district between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2017. It seeks to highlight any changes to recorded crime levels that might be attributed to the Licensing Act and/or the activities of new ride hailing services.

• The main findings include:

o After approximately December 2015, not long after the introduction of the Deregulation Act, the volumes of calls for service for taxi-related crimes began to decrease, whereas all calls (i.e. non-taxi-related) began to increase.

o Examining taxi-related Nuisance and Civil Dispute incidents in particular, these diverged considerably from all other (non-taxi) incidents around the time of the introduction of the Act. This could be a due to fewer cash-based payments (these are a common cause of incidents).

o As with incidents, the volume of taxi-related crime events also began to diverge (and decrease) from all other comparable crimes around the time of the introduction of the Act.

o There appears to have been a large (38%) increase in new private hire driver license applications in Leeds after the introduction of the Deregulation Act. Much of this increase can be attributed to Uber applications (up by 1316% across the study period), but some other firms such as Amber Cars saw increases as well.

• The report recommendations that licensing authorities (continue to) offer de-escalation training to reduce the number of Civil Disputes, and that they should collect more information about the drivers who are working in their area.

• The report provides compelling evidence that taxi-related crime has declined since the introduction of the Licencing Act, but is not yet in a position to state, categorically, that these changes are as a result of the Act.”