We’ve been working with CDPS to bring a user-centred approach to understanding safety concerns in the taxis and private hire vehicle trade. We wanted to understand:  

  • passengers’ safety concerns 

  • experiences that make passengers feel unsafe 

  • actions passengers take to keep themselves safe 

  • safety concerns of taxi and private hire vehicle drivers 

The team did an excellent job, getting out to locations around Wales to interview 32 passengers and 24 people working in the trade. This included passengers who shared protected characteristics such as age, sex, race, gender reassignment and sexual orientation. Learning more about how passengers’ and drivers’ attitudes to safety has really helped us to understand the issues and will lead to better solutions. 

What we found 

We have learned a lot about perceptions of safety and actions passengers and drivers take to keep themselves safe.  

Now that we have come to the end of the discovery phase, we are reflecting on what we’ve learned and planning next steps.  

A different way of working for our team  

The team are completely sold on the value this project has added to the Taxi Bill development process. 

I love the phrase “working in the open”. Within Welsh Government, we talk about involving people and working in partnership. To me, working in the open is that.  
We have done quite a bit of engagement around the Taxi Bill, but we have tended to deal with one group of stakeholders at a time. There is something powerful and democratic about the show and tell format where we show something we are working on to gather feedback and anyone can ask anything. 

I certainly plan to look for opportunities to continue this way of working and I will encourage others to do the same.  

Next steps 

In the new year, we will be working with CDPS to look at the recommendations to explore how licensing data is collected, stored and used. We want to consider whether sharing licensing data between local authorities and with passengers could help to improve safety. And there may also be potential to share data with other partners to allow them to build services which passengers would find useful. Because the focus remains on users and their needs. 

To learn more about the research findings, watch our end of discovery show and tell.