Vehicle Standards is the description for the specific vehicle features required to be considered suitable for use as a small public service vehicle or SPSV.
Some of these features are assessed at the Suitability Inspection prior to an SPSV licence being granted. This Suitability Inspection is undertaken by National Car Testing Services Limited (NCTS Ltd).
The Vehicle Standards above are in addition to the standard roadworthiness requirements that all road vehicles are subject to. As with private cars the roadworthiness is assessed by the National Car Test conducted by NCTS Ltd, the only difference being that the NCT is required annually and this occurs at first licensing and thereafter every year at SPSV licence renewal.
There are basically two types of SPSV, those for public hire which comprises of taxis and wheelchair accessible taxis (i.e. may be hired on the street) and those for private hire which comprises of hackneys and limousines (i.e. must be pre-booked). There are different suitability criteria for each category of SPSV licence. All licensed SPSVs display the tamper-proof discs, for further information please see here.
The current suitability items date back, in some instances, to 1961 and over the years there have been amendments and revisions but a comprehensive review of all the SPSV requirements has only been recently undertaken by the Commission for Taxi Regulation. For further information on the current Vehicle Standards please see here.
Consultation Paper Number Four Vehicle Standards (pdf download) in December 2006 built upon information gathered during the National Review in 2005 (pdf download) and resulted in the publication of the National Vehicle Standards Requirements in November 2007 (pdf download). These future vehicle suitability requirements bring together all of the requirements for all of the categories in one document. To learn more about the future Vehicle Standards please see here.
It is important to understand the difference between the current and the future “rules”.