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FREE NOW (FreeNow by Lyft) - UK drivers and passengers
FREE NOW UK accident claims: black-cab, PHV and passenger files
FREENOW runs a two-fleet operating model in the UK - TfL-licensed black cabs on one side, licensed PHVs on the other, with separate driver terms after the December 2021 London High Court ruling. This page covers the claim route for both fleets and for passengers, with Knowledge of London earnings evidence on the cab side, app-payout schedules on the PHV side, and TfL Taxi & Private Hire notification duties under the London Hackney Carriages Act 1843, the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998.
- 24/7 cab and PHV dispatch
- LEVC TX like-for-like
- Knowledge of London earnings build
- Non-regulated accident support
24/7
UK response
Recovery dispatch and live claim handlers, 365 days a year.
Response
<60m
First contact SLA
Cost
£0
Upfront to driver
FREE NOW - branded since the August 2025 Lyft acquisition as “FreeNow by Lyft” - is structurally unlike its UK competitors. In London it is primarily a black-cab booking platform, with the hackney-carriage driver operating under the Knowledge of London licence regime and Class 3 hackney hire-and-reward cover. From 2020 it has also taken licensed PHV bookings in London and in a number of other UK cities, and since 13 June 2022 it has contracted directly with the passenger on the PHV side following the December 2021 High Court ruling against the old agency model. The result is a two-fleet operating model: one driver terms set for cabbies, a different one for PHV drivers, two different insurance classes, two different licensing regimes - and a single passenger app on top. This page walks the accident claim route through both fleets and from the passenger side.
FREE NOW’s UK ownership and operating model
The FREENOW brand was created in 2019 out of the merger of the German mytaxi business and the UK / Ireland Hailo business, which itself dated from 2011. From 2019 the business was held as a 50/50 joint venture between BMW Group and Daimler / Mercedes-Benz Mobility, the two German automotive groups that had earlier consolidated their multiple mobility investments into the FREENOW and SHARE NOW brands. In April 2025 Lyft, Inc. - the US ride-hailing group - announced a definitive agreement to acquire FREENOW from BMW and Mercedes-Benz for approximately US$197 million. The acquisition closed on 1 August 2025, since when the business has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lyft and has been marketed under the “FreeNow by Lyft” brand. The UK trading entity is FREENOW LTD, Companies House registered number 14576877, with registered office at 114a Cromwell Road, 3rd Floor, London SW7 4AG.
Geographically the UK operation covers London (the dominant market) and a smaller set of regional cities: Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Brighton, Reading, Oxford, Derby and Leicester. The London business is primarily hackney carriage; the regional cities run a mix of cab and PHV work; outside London the underlying licensing rests with the relevant district council (Manchester City Council, Nottingham City Council, Edinburgh Council and so on) under the local authority licensing framework that sits alongside, but separately from, the London regime. The change of ownership matters operationally because Lyft has indicated a longer-term integration plan - driver app convergence, fare logic alignment, autonomous-vehicle pilots - but at the time of writing the UK customer-facing app, the driver-facing app and the contractual relationships with TfL and local councils remain on the FREENOW side. The accident claim route does not change with the parent company; the driver’s own hire-and-reward insurer is still the policy that responds, and the FREENOW booking record is still the evidential record that ties the trip to the passenger.
For a claims file the practical questions on day one are: which fleet was the driver working - hackney or PHV - at the moment of the collision; what city was the booking taken in; was the trip in progress or was the driver on app-on idle; and was the vehicle owned by the driver (the typical cabbie position) or rented in (more common on the regional PHV side). Those four questions decide which terms apply, which insurer is on cover and which licensing authority needs notice.
The black-cab versus PHV split inside the FREE NOW app
In London a single FREENOW booking can be fulfilled by a hackney carriage (a TfL-licensed black cab) or by a licensed PHV. From the passenger’s side the app looks similar; from the driver’s side the two fleets sit on entirely different legal foundations. The hackney cab driver is licensed under the London Hackney Carriages Act 1843 and the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 - supplemented by modern enabling legislation such as the Transport for London Act 2008 - and is administered by TfL Taxi and Private Hire. The PHV driver, by contrast, sits under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 - the same statutory bedrock that governs Uber and Bolt drivers in London - with a separate operator, driver and vehicle licensing track.
The contractual position diverges too. In December 2021 the High Court ruled, in the long-running Uber London litigation, that a PHV operator in London must contract directly with the passenger to operate lawfully under the 1998 Act; it could not simply act as an agent introducing the passenger to the driver. FREENOW responded by splitting its driver terms with effect from 13 June 2022: on the PHV side, FREENOW now contracts directly with the passenger for the carriage, and the driver is on a separate sub-contract with FREENOW; on the hackney side, the old agency model continues because the 1998 Act does not apply to hackney work. That structural split has real consequences for who the passenger sues if something goes wrong. On a PHV trip the operator is, in contract, the carrier. On a hackney trip the driver is in contract with the passenger directly and the operator is an introducer.
Outside London the picture is varied. Some FREENOW regional markets operate predominantly as cab platforms (Edinburgh in particular has a strong hackney heritage), others as PHV (Manchester and Leicester have a larger PHV base), and several run mixed fleets. The licensing authority for each is the relevant city council; the operator licence sits with that council and the licence conditions, including notification duties after a collision, are set locally. A useful rule for the file is to identify the council that issued the plate on the back of the vehicle on day one - that is the authority that will care most about post-accident notification, irrespective of where the operator’s head office is or which platform took the booking.
Class 3 hackney hire-and-reward cover and why the platform doesn’t top it up
London black-cab insurance is structurally different from PHV insurance. A licensed hackney carriage is permitted to ply for hire on the street and to wait at a rank; that pure-hackney use is rated Class 3 hire-and -reward (the insurance market’s shorthand for traditional taxi cover), and the premium reflects both the higher exposure profile of a street-hail vehicle and the higher claim severity in a vehicle designed to carry up to five passengers and a wheelchair in a forward-control layout. The leading UK taxi underwriters and managing general agents on the cab side include Plan Insurance, KGM Underwriting, Acorn Insurance and a number of Aviva-backed taxi schemes; cover is typically annual rather than the rolling thirty-day products that dominate the PHV market, because cabbies are full-time professionals with stable annualised income patterns.
Cabbies are almost always owner-operators in the strict commercial sense: they own (or lease-purchase through a finance company such as Black Horse, Mann Island or Cab Direct) the LEVC TX or another Conditions-of-Fitness compliant vehicle, they place the cover in their own name, they pay the premium themselves, and they hold the V5C in their own name. FREENOW does not provide a top-up insurance layer on the cab side in the UK - the platform’s cab-side commercial offering is essentially booking-flow distribution, payment processing and a rapid-assist accident programme (historically delivered through Rapid Auto Assist on a 24/7 driver helpline), not a separate insurance product. The cabbie’s own Class 3 hackney policy is the entire commercial insurance, and the right post-accident move on the cab side is to notify that insurer immediately, in addition to notifying TfL Taxi and Private Hire and using the FREENOW in-app help flow.
That structural fact has two practical consequences for a claims file. First, when CityGrip opens a FREENOW cab file we go straight to the cabbie’s certificate of motor insurance to identify the underwriter - Plan, KGM, Acorn, Aviva-backed - and we route the notification there, not to FREENOW. Second, the engineer’s valuation on a TX is on the hackney market basis, not the private value of an equivalent passenger car; an LEVC TX in current Conditions of Fitness is worth more on the cab market than the private value of an equivalent black-painted MPV, because the cab’s residual licensing potential is built into the price. The independent engineer’s instruction must reflect that, or the at-fault insurer’s opening offer will undershoot by a material margin.
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Section 3 of the walkthrough.
The PHV-side cover: hire-and-reward, telematics and the platform’s limited overlay
Where FREENOW takes PHV bookings - in London for the minicab side of the fleet, and in the regional cities that run a PHV base - the cover model is the model already familiar from Uber, Bolt and Ola work. The driver carries their own private-hire hire-and-reward policy from one of the specialist underwriters and managing general agents that serve the UK PHV market: Zego (including the telematics-rated Zego Sense product), Inshur, Markel, Acorn and the Aviva-backed PHV schemes. Policy duration runs from thirty-day rolling cover (popular with new drivers and seasonal workers) through annual policies (the norm for full-timers). Section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires that cover to extend to the hire-and-reward use being made of the vehicle at the moment of the collision - a social, domestic and pleasure policy will not satisfy the s.143 requirement when fare-paying passengers are in the car and will leave the driver exposed to a six-points-plus-fine offence under s.143(2) as well as voiding the cover.
FREENOW does not underwrite the PHV. What the platform adds on the PHV side is the in-app safety toolkit (which, as on Uber and Bolt, includes an SOS-style escalation to the driver care team and a written incident report form), the booking-confirmation evidence that ties the trip to the passenger, and a passenger-side rider protection scheme that is a consumer-facing programme rather than a driver-facing top-up. Because FREENOW since 13 June 2022 contracts directly with the passenger for London PHV trips, the platform also carries an operator-side contractual exposure to the passenger that did not exist under the old agency model. The practical effect of that, for an injured passenger, is that the operator is a potential additional defendant alongside the at-fault driver where the facts support it. For the driver’s own claim, however, the road remains the same - open against the at-fault insurer, or against the MIB where the at-fault driver was uninsured or untraced.
Verifying which underwriter is on cover on a given driver’s policy is a day-one step on every PHV file we open. The driver’s certificate of motor insurance is the authoritative record; we read the cover wording for app-on / trip-active endorsements, we check the policy excess and we confirm telematics conditions where Zego Sense or similar products apply. We do not assume a particular underwriter from the platform identity - drivers move between underwriters and a FREENOW driver this month may have been a Bolt driver last month on a different policy.
What the platform actually does at the accident scene
FREENOW’s role at the scene is procedural, not adjudicative. The in-app safety / SOS button escalates to the FREENOW driver care team and preserves the booking reference; the in-app help flow accepts a written incident report; and on the cab side the rapid-assist accident programme (historically delivered through Rapid Auto Assist, with the published driver helpline 08000 541 463) can dispatch a replacement LEVC and refer the driver into accident management. None of that is a substitute for compliance with section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which requires the driver to stop, exchange names, addresses, vehicle registration and insurance details with every driver involved, and to report the collision to a police station or constable within 24 hours where details are not exchanged at the scene, where anyone is injured or where a section 170(8) animal is hurt.
The FREENOW booking reference is the key identifier for the file. It ties the trip to the passenger, to the timestamp, and to the pick-up and drop-off addresses. Where liability is disputed, the booking reference is what unlocks platform telemetry: the GPS trace, the in-app messaging between driver and passenger and (on later trip pricing changes) the speed and route data. CityGrip captures the booking reference on intake and serves it on the at-fault insurer as part of the standard evidence pack so that disclosure requests, where they become necessary, can be targeted with precision rather than scattershot.
One point worth keeping in mind: FREENOW’s dispatcher does not direct the claim. The dispatcher (where one is engaged) handles the booking flow, the immediate safety response and, on the cab side, the rapid-assist referral. The actual claims direction sits with the driver and the driver’s solicitor or accident manager, in dialogue with the at-fault insurer. That separation is deliberate - a platform that directed the claim would be undertaking a regulated claims-management activity in its own right, which FREENOW does not hold permission to do in the UK - and it means the driver, not the platform, decides who handles the file, who values the vehicle and who places any replacement vehicle on credit hire.
Passenger claims against an at-fault FREE NOW driver
A passenger injured by an at-fault FREENOW driver claims against the driver’s own hire-and-reward policy. On the black-cab side that is the cabbie’s Class 3 hackney policy; on the PHV side it is the driver’s private-hire hire-and-reward policy. Where the injury is low value - pain, suffering and loss of amenity at or below £5,000 - the procedural route is the Official Injury Claim portal under the Civil Liability Act 2018, with the whiplash tariff applied to any whiplash-component injury. Where the injury is higher value, the route is a pre-action protocol claim through an SRA-regulated solicitor. CityGrip’s role on the passenger side is signposting and, where appropriate, referral to a panel solicitor on disclosed referral terms.
The booking-confirmation evidence FREENOW provides is the spine of the passenger’s evidence pack. The in-app receipt, the booking reference, the email confirmation and the GPS-anchored pick-up and drop-off addresses together prove the passenger was on a paid trip in the vehicle at the moment of the collision. Where the driver has FREENOW’s in-cabin recording running, the audio and video record will be subject to disclosure on a properly served request. Combine that with the section 170 evidence from the scene - independent witnesses, photographs, the police reference, the other driver’s insurance details - and the file is pre-action ready inside 14 days of the incident.
On the operator-defendant question, the post-2022 contractual position matters. For a London PHV trip, FREENOW contracts directly with the passenger and is therefore in scope as a potential additional defendant where the facts support a claim in negligence or under the Equality Act 2010 against the operator. For a hackney trip, FREENOW remains in the introducer role and the contract is between passenger and cabbie. That does not stop a passenger naming both - claims often plead in the alternative - but it changes the strength of the operator-side argument.
Loss of earnings for a FREE NOW black-cab driver
A green-badge cabbie working London is typically earning at the upper end of the UK driving-for-hire range. Three factors push the ceiling up: the right to ply for hire (which converts street walk-bys and rank queues into fares without paying platform commission), the All London geographic reach (which means the driver can chase peak-time demand across the whole of Greater London rather than a single suburban sector), and the higher fare structure of the metered hackney service versus the PHV app rate. Yellow-badge cabbies - working one of the nine designated suburban sectors - sit a step below on hourly take, with the trade-off of generally lower competition and shorter average shifts.
The evidence pack is built from documentary sources that map cleanly to the cab market. The meter receipts (the LEVC TX’s onboard meter logs fare data day by day, and most cabbies retain the daily print roll in a journey log) are the primary record of cash and card fares. The FREENOW payout statements cover the FREENOW-booked share of the work. The bank credits cross-check both. Fuel, lease or finance, garage and insurance receipts give the cost base. The latest SA302 tax calculation from HMRC anchors the annualised position. From that pack we calculate the net hourly take and multiply it by the off-road hours to give the loss-of-earnings claim. Mitigation is the duty to return to work on a replacement TX as soon as one is sourced, and to keep the journey log running while doing so to evidence post-collision earnings continuity.
One detail that matters specifically on the cab side: the off-road period is not just the bodyshop period. A TX that has sustained structural damage must pass a TfL Conditions-of-Fitness re-inspection before it can return to the rank, and the licensing authority can require additional checks. The recoverable off-road period under Dimond v Lovell and Lagden v O’Connor runs to the date the cab is re-licensed, not the date the bodyshop hands the keys back. CityGrip builds the schedule to that date, with engineer evidence supporting the period.
Loss of earnings for a FREE NOW PHV driver
On the PHV side the loss-of-earnings build is the same in shape as a build for an Uber or a Bolt driver. The platform commission applicable to the FREENOW PHV product on the day of the collision is deducted from gross fares; fuel at actual receipts is deducted next; an apportionment of fixed costs (vehicle rental or finance, insurance premium, MOT, any cleaning or maintenance fees) is then deducted over the hours actually worked; and finally Class 2 and Class 4 NICs are applied to give the figure that is recoverable as net loss. Build the pack from six to eight weeks of FREENOW PHV earnings statements, the bank credits, fuel receipts, rental or finance statements and the latest SA302.
Two adjustments matter. The duty to mitigate requires the driver to return to work as soon as it is safe to do so, on a licensed replacement PHV if one can be sourced - a standard private courtesy car is not a substitute, because driving fare-paying passengers in such a vehicle is uninsured under s.143 RTA 1988. The credibility test the at-fault insurer will run against the bank statements and the SA302 requires the schedule to be defensible: produce the originals, do not inflate the hours, and prefer documentary evidence to estimation throughout. Where the driver has been working unusually hard in the weeks before the collision (a not-uncommon spike) the schedule should explain the variance with reference to the weeks shown in the bank statements rather than rely on assertion.
Where the driver has additional income strands - PAYE side-employment, a Construction Industry Scheme moonlight, a non-FREENOW driving role - each strand is recoverable on its own evidence. The PAYE element comes from the employer’s payroll; the CIS from the contractor’s CIS deduction statements; the additional driving from the relevant platform statements. The aggregate is the claim, with explicit deduplication of any hours that could be on two platforms at once.
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Cross-platform working: FREE NOW alongside Uber, Bolt and other apps
The economic reality of UK driving-for-hire is that most full-time PHV drivers are signed up on at least two platforms and many are signed up on three. A typical Manchester PHV driver might have Uber, Bolt and FREENOW open simultaneously, accept whichever app fires first, and rotate as supply and demand shift through the day. On the London cab side, FREENOW is the dominant cab platform but cabbies also pick up walk-ups, rank work, account work through traditional radio circuits (Computer Cab and Dial-a-Cab being two long-standing examples) and the occasional Gett or Bolt cab booking. The result is a multi-source earnings record that has to be aggregated, deduplicated and reconciled against the single annual SA302.
The aggregation logic is straightforward in principle and exacting in practice. Pull the eight-week pre-accident earnings statements from each platform the driver was working. Lay them out on a single grid by hour of day across the week. Identify and remove any apparent double-counts - a trip that overlaps in time with another trip on a different platform cannot stand. Cross-check the aggregate against bank credits net of refunds and chargebacks. Tie the aggregate to the SA302 figure for the tax year, normalising for any obvious month-on-month variation. The result is a defensible net hourly take that can be multiplied through to the off-road hours of the post-collision recovery period.
A specific FREE NOW wrinkle: where the same driver is working both the FREENOW hackney fleet (in London, on a cabbie’s Knowledge licence) and the FREENOW PHV fleet (outside London, on a PHV licence in a regional city), the two strands cannot be mixed in the same schedule. The licence classes are different, the regulatory regimes are different and the rate structures are different. That kind of dual-track working is rare but not unheard of; where it occurs, CityGrip treats the cab strand and the PHV strand as parallel schedules, each documented on its own evidence pack.
The hackney carriage licence regime, the Knowledge of London and the badge
Behind every London FREENOW cab booking is a driver who has passed the Knowledge of London. The Knowledge is administered by TfL Taxi and Private Hire under the modern enabling legislation that builds on the 1843 and 1869 Acts, and it is, by any practical measure, one of the most demanding professional licensing exams in the UK transport sector. Candidates typically spend three to four years across seven stages: the introductory pack, the Blue Book of 320 runs, multiple oral “appearances” in which the examiner can ask any run between any two London landmarks at increasing speed, and finally a series of map and policy assessments before the badge is issued. The All London track leads to a green badge and the right to ply for hire across the whole of Greater London; the Suburban track leads to a yellow badge and the right to ply for hire in one of nine designated suburban sectors.
The badge is the licensing authority’s expression of the driver’s fitness, and a collision can affect it in two ways. First, a medical-fitness referral following injury can suspend the badge pending a Group 2 medical assessment - that is the standard for any vocational licence and applies to cabbies as much as to lorry drivers. Second, a sustained Code of Conduct complaint (from a passenger, from another road user or from TfL’s own enforcement officers) can lead to a fitness review and ultimately a revocation; the right of appeal is to the Magistrates’ Court under the modern statutory framework. The claims-file implication is that we record the badge type, the badge number and the licence-expiry date on day one - because a driver whose badge is suspended is off the road on a different basis from a driver whose vehicle is off the road, and the recoverable off-road period is drawn accordingly.
On the vehicle side, the hackney carriage must meet the TfL Conditions of Fitness - turning circle, wheelchair access, partition, hackney identifier plate position and so on. A vehicle that sustains structural damage in a collision must be repaired to those standards and pass a fresh inspection before it returns to the rank. The independent engineer’s report on a FREENOW cab file therefore covers both the ordinary post-accident repair scope and the cab-specific re-licensing criteria. Repair to a PAS 125 / BS 10125 standard at a bodyshop with cab experience is the right baseline; a generic private-car bodyshop will struggle with the cab-specific elements.
Continue inside the UK minicab and taxi vertical
FREENOW sits inside a wider cluster of platform and licence-specific claim routes. The hub above explains the regulatory landscape and the per-state insurance model; the lateral pages give the carrier-by-carrier breakdown and the specific evidence templates for hire-and-reward insurance, TfL PHV licensing and the platform-specific files.
Six-step post-FREE NOW-accident notification flow
Step 1
Comply with section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 at the scene
Stop, set hazards, check the passenger, and exchange names, addresses, vehicle registration and insurance details with every driver involved. If anyone is injured, details are not exchanged at the scene, or an animal listed in s.170(8) is hurt, you must report the collision to a police station or constable as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event within 24 hours. Photograph every vehicle in situ before they are moved and back up the dashcam clip - both the cab-side LEVC TX recorder and any PHV-side dashcam unit.
Step 2
Open the in-app safety report inside the FreeNow Driver app
Tap the in-app help / safety toolkit and file a written incident report. The report is the platform's record and is the trigger for FREENOW's driver care team to engage. On the black-cab side, drivers in the FREENOW UK rapid-assist programme can call the FREENOW driver helpline (historically 08000 541 463, operated by Rapid Auto Assist) for a replacement LEVC and accident management referral. Keep the FREENOW booking reference - it identifies the trip and the passenger.
Step 3
Notify TfL Taxi & Private Hire where the licence terms require it
Hackney carriage and PHV vehicle licences both require notification of any collision that materially affects the safety, performance, appearance or comfort of the vehicle. For TfL-licensed PHV owners the published licensee responsibilities require notification within 72 hours, with a re-inspection requirement under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998. For hackney carriages, the Conditions of Fitness apply and a vehicle that has sustained structural damage cannot return to the rank until it has passed re-inspection. Outside London notify the issuing district council under its own licence conditions.
Step 4
Notify the underlying hire-and-reward insurer regardless of fault
Cab side: Plan Insurance, KGM, Acorn, the Aviva-backed taxi schemes - whichever underwrites your Class 3 hackney policy. PHV side: Zego (often Zego Sense), Inshur, Markel, Acorn or the Aviva-backed PHV schemes. Send the same evidence pack - narrative, photographs, dashcam clip, other driver's s.170 details, FREENOW booking reference and police reference where one applies. Failure to notify within the policy's time limit can prejudice both the third-party recovery and any first-party cover for the cab or PHV.
Step 5
Open the third-party claim and arrange a licensed replacement
On a non-fault file the third-party claim is opened against the at-fault driver's insurer. A like-for-like replacement vehicle is sourced under Dimond v Lovell [2000] UKHL 27 and Lagden v O'Connor [2003] UKHL 64. For a cabbie that is a licensed hackney carriage - typically an LEVC TX on credit hire from a specialist taxi credit-hire fleet. For a PHV driver that is a licensed PHV on credit hire from a specialist PHV credit-hire fleet. A standard private courtesy car is not like-for-like for a working FREENOW driver in either fleet.
Step 6
Build the loss-of-earnings pack from meter, app and tax data
Pull the meter receipts (cab side), the FREENOW driver payout statements, parallel Uber / Bolt statements for cross-platform PHV drivers, bank credits, fuel receipts, lease or finance statements, the certificate of motor insurance and the latest SA302 from HMRC. Calculate net hourly take; multiply by the off-road hours. Mitigate by returning to work on the replacement vehicle as soon as it is sourced. Keep all original documents until the claim concludes - the at-fault insurer is entitled to test the schedule against the bank statements and the tax records.
FREE NOW accident claim FAQs
- Who owns FREE NOW in the United Kingdom in 2026?
- FREENOW is owned by Lyft, Inc. (the US ride-hailing group). Lyft completed its acquisition of the FREENOW business from BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz Mobility on 1 August 2025 for approximately US$197 million, and the brand is now marketed as 'FreeNow by Lyft'. The UK trading entity is FREENOW LTD, Companies House registered number 14576877, with a registered office at 114a Cromwell Road, London SW7 4AG. Between 2019 and August 2025 the joint owners were BMW Group and Daimler / Mercedes-Benz Mobility, following the 2018 merger that created FREENOW out of mytaxi and Hailo.
- Does FREE NOW operate as a black-cab app, a minicab app or both in the UK?
- Both, depending on the city, and the operating model is different for each. In London FREENOW is primarily a black-cab (hackney carriage) booking platform - drivers are TfL-licensed hackney carriage drivers under the London Hackney Carriages Act 1843 and the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869. Since 2020 FREENOW has also taken PHV bookings in London and in several other UK cities (Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Brighton, Reading, Oxford, Derby and Leicester). Following the December 2021 High Court ruling on the contractual position of London PHV operators, FREENOW splits its driver terms into a hackney set and a private-hire set, with effect from 13 June 2022, and contracts directly with the passenger for PHV rides.
- What insurance does a FREE NOW black-cab driver carry?
- A London hackney carriage driver carries Class 3 hackney hire-and-reward cover on the cab. Class 3 reflects the right of a TfL-licensed taxi to ply for hire on the street and at a rank, which is wider than the PHV cover class used by minicab drivers. The cover is owner-operator: the cabbie owns or finances the LEVC TX or a comparable Conditions of Fitness vehicle, places the cover with a specialist taxi insurer such as Plan Insurance, KGM, Acorn or via the Aviva-backed cab schemes, and pays the premium directly. FREENOW does not provide a top-up cover layer on the cab side in the UK - the cabbie's own Class 3 hackney policy is the entire commercial insurance, supplemented only by FREENOW's app-side passenger protection scheme.
- What insurance does a FREE NOW PHV driver carry?
- A PHV driver carries hire-and-reward private-hire cover on the same basis as a driver on the Uber or Bolt platforms. The cover is placed with one of the specialist PHV underwriters - Zego (often the telematics-rated Zego Sense product), Inshur, Markel, Acorn or an Aviva-backed scheme. Free Now itself does not insure the PHV; the platform layers an in-app safety / incident reporting tool on top of the driver's own policy and (under the 2021 ruling) takes the booking contract with the passenger directly. The driver's certificate must cover hire-and-reward use under section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 - a social, domestic and pleasure policy will not satisfy that requirement when fare-paying passengers are in the car.
- What does FREE NOW do at the scene of an accident?
- FREENOW is a booking platform, not a claims handler. At the scene the driver is expected to use the in-app safety / SOS feature to escalate to the FREENOW driver care team, and to file a written incident report through the in-app help flow as soon as it is reasonable to do so. The platform preserves the booking reference, the trip telemetry and the passenger contact data, and on the cab side it can route the driver to its rapid-assist accident programme (FREENOW's UK programme has historically been delivered through Rapid Auto Assist on 08000 541 463). The dispatcher does not direct the claim and FREENOW does not negotiate liability - that is for the driver's own insurer and (for a non-fault file) the at-fault driver's insurer.
- How does a passenger claim against an at-fault FREE NOW driver?
- A passenger injured by an at-fault FREENOW driver claims against the driver's own hire-and-reward policy. On the black-cab side that is the cabbie's Class 3 hackney policy. On the PHV side it is the driver's PHV hire-and-reward policy. FREENOW provides booking-confirmation evidence - the email or in-app receipt that ties the passenger to the trip, the timestamp and the pick-up / drop-off addresses. For low-value injury (pain, suffering and loss of amenity up to £5,000) the route is the Official Injury Claim portal at officialinjuryclaim.org.uk under the Civil Liability Act 2018 reforms. For higher-value injury the route is a pre-action protocol claim through an SRA-regulated solicitor.
- How is loss of earnings calculated for a FREE NOW black-cab driver?
- A London Knowledge of London licensed driver has a higher hourly earnings ceiling than a PHV driver - green-badge cabbies work the central zone, can ply for hire and pick up rank work as well as app bookings, and typically gross more per hour than an app-only PHV driver. Evidence is built from the meter receipts (the TX meter prints fare data on most modern installations and most cabbies retain the daily roll), the FREENOW app payout statements for the digital share of the work, bank credits, fuel and lease finance evidence, and the SA302 tax calculation for the prior tax year. Deduct fuel, lease or finance, insurance, garage charges, plate fees and Class 2 / Class 4 NICs to reach the net hourly take; multiply by the off-road hours to reach the claim figure. Mitigate by returning to work as soon as it is safe to do so.
- How is loss of earnings calculated for a FREE NOW PHV driver?
- On the PHV side the evidence pack is identical in shape to an Uber or Bolt loss-of-earnings build: pull six to eight weeks of FREENOW PHV earnings statements (and any parallel Uber, Bolt, Ola or Wheely statements for the same period), bank credits, fuel receipts, rental or finance, premium receipts and the SA302. From gross fares deduct the platform commission applicable to the FREENOW PHV product on the day of the collision, fuel, an apportionment of fixed costs and NICs. The recoverable figure is the net loss, not the gross fare. As with any self-employed driver, the claimant has a duty to mitigate and must return to work on a licensed replacement PHV as soon as one is sourced.
- How do you handle a driver who works on FREE NOW and on Uber and Bolt at the same time?
- Cross-platform working is the norm rather than the exception for UK app drivers - most full-time PHV drivers are signed up on at least Uber and Bolt and many also work FREENOW. The loss-of-earnings schedule aggregates all platform statements for the recovery period, deduplicates the underlying hours (one driver cannot be on two trips at once), and treats the post-accident off-road period as one period of loss across all platforms. Tax records (SA302) anchor the schedule to a single annual figure to avoid double-counting. Where the driver also drives the FREENOW black-cab fleet, the cab earnings strand is treated separately because the rate structure, the licence class and the regulatory regime are all distinct.
- What is the difference between a green badge and a yellow badge cabbie?
- The Knowledge of London is the licensing exam administered by Transport for London for hackney carriage drivers. Candidates can sit either the All London Knowledge (which leads to a green badge and the right to work the whole of Greater London) or the Suburban Knowledge (which leads to a yellow badge and the right to work in one of nine designated suburban sectors). The Knowledge typically takes three to four years and runs through seven stages including an introductory pack, a Blue Book, multiple appearances and a written assessment. After a collision the badge is at risk in two ways: a TfL medical referral can suspend the badge on fitness grounds, and a sustained Code-of-Conduct complaint can lead to revocation. The accident management file should capture badge type on day one because the loss-of-earnings ceiling differs by badge.
- Is the London Hackney Carriages Act 1843 still in force?
- Yes. The London Hackney Carriages Act 1843 remains on the statute book, in force and updated for known amendments as published by legislation.gov.uk. It is supplemented by the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 - which transferred the licensing functions in the Metropolitan Police District to what is now Transport for London - and by Transport for London Act 2008 amendments. Outside London the equivalent foundation is the Town Police Clauses Act 1847 (hackney carriage provisions) supplemented by local Acts. The Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 sits alongside the 1843 Act for PHV work; the two regimes are distinct and a single driver may hold one licence but not the other.
- How long do I have to bring a claim arising from a FREE NOW accident?
- Three years from the date of the accident for personal injury, under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980. The court has a residual discretion under section 33 of the same Act to extend that period, but discretionary extension is not something a claimant should plan around. Property damage carries a six-year limit under section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980. For passengers with low-value injury under £5,000 PSLA, the Official Injury Claim portal under the Civil Liability Act 2018 is the procedural route. CityGrip's policy is to issue notification on the driver's hire-and-reward insurer within 14 days of intake and to keep the file pre-action ready inside the first 90 days, regardless of how long the third-party insurer takes to engage.
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Open a FREE NOW UK accident fileUK accident support, end-to-end.
24/7 dispatch for both the FREENOW black-cab and PHV fleets, licensed like-for-like replacement (LEVC TX on the cab side, PHV-plated on the minicab side), independent engineer and loss-of-earnings build on meter, app and tax data. CityGrip Accident Claims (Citygrip LTD).
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