Nottingham City Council is proposing to change the way safeguarding training is required for licensed taxi and private hire drivers, moving from a one-off requirement at first application to a system of regular refresher training every three years.
Under the current arrangements, drivers licensed by Nottingham City Council are required to complete compulsory safeguarding training only when they first apply for a taxi or private hire licence. The council is now seeking approval for a policy change that would require drivers to complete the training again at least once every three years and provide a valid certificate when renewing their licence. For drivers who choose to renew their licence annually, the training would need to be completed on every third renewal.
The proposal comes from the council’s Environmental Health and Public Protection department. The decision carries no cost to the council itself, although licensed drivers would be required to pay the cost of the training when it is repeated every three years. If a driver fails to complete the training or provide certification at renewal, their licence application would not be progressed, meaning they would no longer be licensed by the council.
The proposed change is linked to the findings of the Casey review into historical child sexual exploitation, published in June 2025 and led by Baroness Louise Casey. The review examined how public bodies, including local authorities and police forces, responded to group-based child sexual abuse and included a detailed section on the role of taxi and private hire licensing. It found that perpetrators had repeatedly exploited weaknesses and inconsistencies in licensing standards between different council areas.
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The report highlighted particular concern about the ability for drivers to be licensed in one local authority area while carrying out work in another, making it harder for councils to enforce safeguarding standards and allowing unsuitable individuals to operate with limited oversight. While some councils, particularly those previously affected by exploitation cases, had introduced stricter local standards, the review concluded that uneven approaches across the country undermined safeguarding efforts.
Among its recommendations, the Casey review called for more rigorous and standardised taxi licensing requirements and urged the government to close what it described as the “out-of-area working loophole”. The government has since confirmed it accepts all of the review’s recommendations and has committed to legislating to address inconsistent taxi and private hire licensing standards, although it has not committed to banning out-of-area working entirely.
Nottingham City Council’s proposal also draws on practice developed by Rotherham Borough Council, which was cited in the review as an example of strengthened safeguards following earlier failures. This includes requiring safeguarding training to be refreshed every three years and setting higher expectations around knowledge testing.
Safeguarding training for Nottingham-licensed drivers is currently delivered by the Blue Lamp Trust and was developed in conjunction with Hampshire Police. The course covers issues including child sexual and criminal exploitation, modern slavery, human trafficking, domestic abuse, recognising signs of abuse, and how and when to report concerns. It is delivered through three modules with knowledge checks throughout and a final assessment at the end, after which drivers receive a personalised certificate on successful completion.
At present, the pass mark for each module and the final assessment is 70 per cent. The council has confirmed it is working with the training provider to explore whether this could be increased to a 100 per cent pass requirement, in line with the good practice highlighted in the Casey review, although this change has not yet been confirmed.
The decision has been classified as an operational matter because it falls below the financial threshold requiring a wider political decision, and was taken under delegated powers by the council’s head of environmental and public protection in November 2025. If approved, the change would bring Nottingham City Council’s licensing requirements closer into line with emerging national expectations on safeguarding, ahead of any future changes to national legislation.
