The Air Quality (Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles Database) (England and Wales) Regulations 2019 have been debated in Parliament and will come into force on 1 May 2019.

The 2019 Order will require all licensing authorities in England and Wales to send to a central portal on a minimum weekly basis, certain information about the taxis and PHVs that they have licensed. This will include the Vehicle Registration Mark, the start and expiry date of the vehicle licence, whether the vehicle is a taxi or PHV, the name of the licensing authority, the licence plate number and an indication of whether it is a wheelchair accessible vehicle.

DEFRA has said that licensing authorities “…will not need to provide this data straightaway from 1 May.”

It confirmed that there will be a phased approach from the end of May for receipt of data from licensing authorities for testing and readiness to go live in January 2020 (the start of the first charging Clean Air Zones in Leeds and Birmingham)

A guidance document will be issued shortly which will provide more detail about timeframes, the way in which information can be transferred (ideally by API integration but we will accept a .csv upload of the data) and processes to ensure compliance with the requirements of applicable data privacy legislation.

In the meantime, DEFRA has recommended that all licensing authorities in England and Wales start to consider the following points in preparation for the transfer of data:

• The completion of a data sharing agreement. This must be in place before any data can be sent. A template will be available shortly
• Alerting your IT Department to the data transfer requirements
• A review of your data governance policies to ensure that your procedures comply with data protection requirements including providing fair processing information to individuals at the point that their personal data is collected. This will include informing those whom you license of the use of their data.

Councils can contact DEFRA on taxiandphvcentralised.database@defra.gov.uk if you have any further queries at this stage.