Liverpool minicab accident claims for PHV drivers and passengers

Liverpool City Council Licensing and Regulatory Services - the licensing authority

Liverpool's PHV licensing authority is Liverpool City Council, acting through Licensing and Regulatory Services at the Cunard Building, Water Street, Liverpool L3 1AH, telephone 0151 233 3015. The statutory frame is Part II of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 - section 46 (offences), section 48 (vehicle licences), section 51 (driver licences), section 55 (operator licences), section 60 (suspension and revocation of vehicle licences), section 61 (suspension and revocation of driver licences) and section 77 (appeal to the magistrates' court). The public licensing register, with operator, driver and vehicle search facilities, is published at licensing.liverpool.gov.uk.

The Liverpool licence conditions made under section 48 of the LGMPA 1976 require the licensee to notify the council of any collision that materially affects the safety, performance, appearance or comfort of the vehicle. The vehicle must then be presented for re-inspection at an LCC-approved testing station before it returns to passenger-carrying work. Liverpool publishes its list of approved stations on the vehicle-specifications page at liverpool.gov.uk. CityGrip's policy on every Liverpool file is to identify the issuing authority on the plate first - because a Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley or St Helens plate triggers a different authority's notification regime even where the collision is in Liverpool's own L1 or L3 postcodes.

A judgement note: the Cunard Building is the Pier Head waterfront address used for licensing correspondence; LCC also routes telephone licensing enquiries through its Liverpool Direct customer-service line. Written notice is preferred for accident reporting because it produces a dated, traceable paper trail the appeal tribunal can rely on at any later section 77 hearing.

Why Liverpool has a high private hire vehicle population

Liverpool City Council has historically licensed private hire vehicles on demand. Under the Transport Act 1985 the power to limit hackney carriage numbers in a district was made conditional on an unmet-demand survey; outside London there has never been a statutory cap on PHV numbers. Liverpool has not exercised any voluntary cap. The combination of low entry barriers, a large student population, a night-time economy concentrated in a small ring of streets and the presence of Delta Taxis as a single high-volume dispatcher running thousands of self-employed drivers has pushed Liverpool's plate count to a figure that, on a per-capita basis, is substantially higher than most English cities of comparable size.

The precise current number is published in the LCC public licensing register at licensing.liverpool.gov.uk and changes month to month. The order of magnitude is in the low thousands of PHV plates plus several hundred hackney carriage plates; the council does not cap either category and renewals are processed on a rolling basis. For a non-fault claim file the headline consequence of that scale is the operator-side bandwidth: Delta and the other Liverpool circuits handle very large daily call volumes, which means the operator's incident-report channel is the single most important early touchpoint after the section 170 RTA 1988 details exchange.

Fees are a useful proxy for the council's commercial calibration. A new private hire plate is currently £185, with annual renewals as standard; vehicles over eight years old (and hackney carriages over eleven years old) renew every six months, which schedules a second full LCC examination each year. For a post-accident file involving an older vehicle, expect the interim re-inspection to fall sooner than it would for a newer car, and to be more thorough on body-corrosion and structural-repair sign-off.

Delta Taxis Ltd - the Liverpool circuit dispatcher

Delta Taxis Ltd, Companies House registration number 11668064, is the dominant Liverpool private hire operator. The brand has been trading since 1968 on a family-run basis. The business operates a circuit-style dispatcher model - passengers book through a single Delta phone number, a single Delta mobile app or the Delta web booking flow, and the booking is routed by the central dispatch system to one of the self-employed drivers logged into the circuit. Delta publicly describes itself as one of the largest single private hire operations in the United Kingdom and as the busiest taxi dispatch call centre in Europe by trip volume, with multi-million annual bookings across Merseyside, West Lancashire, Halton and Warrington.

For an accident file three Delta-specific points matter. First, every Delta driver holds a separate LCC PHV driver licence and operates a separately LCC-plated vehicle - Delta itself is the section 55 licensed operator, not the vehicle owner. Second, section 56 of the LGMPA 1976 deems the booking contract to be with the Delta operator entity, irrespective of which self-employed driver fulfilled the booking, so a passenger claim names Delta Taxis Ltd as the booking operator alongside the driver. Third, Delta's in-house safety reporting flow is the primary operator-side evidence channel: the booking reference, dispatch timestamp, route polyline and driver identifier are all retained by Delta's dispatch system and can be requested under the Delta safety-incident process for the claim file.

A calibration note on the "largest in the UK" claim: market-share rankings in the UK private hire sector are contested. Veezu and the Addison Lee fleet are also at very large scale on different measures (fleet size, geographic reach, gross fare revenue). The fair statement for the page record is that Delta is Liverpool's dominant single operator and among the largest single private hire dispatch operations in the United Kingdom on trip-volume metrics.

Liverpool PHV vehicle age, conditions of fitness and re-inspection

LCC's Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Vehicle Standards and Criteria document is the working specification for any vehicle the council licenses. It is published as a PDF from the LCC vehicle-specifications page and is the document the approved testing station works to at the annual examination. Liverpool does not impose a hard age cut-off beyond which a PHV is refused; instead the renewal cadence tightens once the vehicle is older. Private hire plates renew annually as standard; private hire vehicles over eight years old renew every six months. Hackney carriages over eleven years old similarly renew every six months. The practical effect is two LCC inspections per year for any older vehicle.

Conditions of fitness in Liverpool cover the standard heads: bodywork condition, paintwork uniformity, internal cleanliness, seat condition, seatbelt operation, brake balance, suspension geometry, emissions, lamps and horn, plate visibility and the LCC PHV signage rules. After a collision a station inspection runs against the same checklist. Where the bodyshop has replaced a structural component, the inspection adds a structural element - photographs of every replaced panel, the welder's certifications and method statement, replaced-part part numbers, and a sign-off by the engineer. A PAS 125 / BS 10125 accredited bodyshop is the practical baseline for any repair that involves welding or chassis straightening; without that paper trail the LCC examiner can refuse to issue the plate restoration.

The judgement question for a driver offered a total-loss settlement is whether the repair is economically rational once the LCC re-inspection requirement is priced in. A Cat S salvage retention that would be straightforward for a private car can fail on the LCC structural test if the repair pack is thin. Liverpool drivers should not commit to salvage retention without first reading the council's current published policy on Cat S and Cat N relicensing for PHV and consulting an independent engineer.

Cross-border PHV traffic - Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens

Liverpool's licensed PHV market does not stop at the council boundary. Across the Mersey the Wirral Council licensing authority (based at Wallasey Town Hall) plates a substantial PHV fleet. North of the city, Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council (Bootle) plates another sizeable PHV population that regularly works Liverpool bookings, particularly the airport, cruise terminal and city-centre night-economy runs. Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council (Huyton) and St Helens Borough Council also issue PHV plates that frequently appear on Liverpool city-centre work, especially out to Anfield, Goodison and the Aintree match-day clusters.

Since section 10 of the Deregulation Act 2015 came into force, a PHV booking taken by an operator licensed in one authority can be sub-contracted to an operator licensed in another, provided the receiving operator is using a driver and vehicle plated by the same authority as itself. This is the legal basis for the cross-river working pattern: a Liverpool-based Delta booking can lawfully be sub-contracted out to a Wirral-licensed operator running a Wirral-plated car driven by a Wirral-licensed driver, and that arrangement is what the driver's plate actually documents.

The accident-file consequence is procedural. The post-collision notification duty under licence conditions sits with the authority that issued the plate, not the authority of the collision location. A Wirral-plated PHV that crashes on Strand Street notifies Wirral Council, not Liverpool. A St Helens-plated PHV that crashes on the A580 East Lancs Road notifies St Helens. CityGrip checks the plate text first on every Liverpool intake call and routes the notification to the correct authority - getting that wrong delays the re-inspection and lengthens the off-road period.

Liverpool accident hotspots specific to PHV operation

The Liverpool road network has half a dozen high-frequency PHV collision corridors that show up in operator dispatch records year on year. None of them is unique to PHV - every road user uses them - but the hours and conditions under which a PHV typically uses them are themselves concentrating factors.

A565 dock road (Regent Road, Great Howard Street and the Strand). This is the dock-road corridor running parallel to the Mersey between Sandhills and the Pier Head. It carries heavy HGV traffic from the Port of Liverpool, mixed-class traffic to and from the Cruise Liner Terminal and PHV pick-ups for Pier Head and ferry-terminal jobs. The pressure points are the Sandhills roundabout interface with the A5089 and the Strand entry to the Queensway Tunnel.

A580 East Lancs Road. The dual-carriageway east-bound arterial out of Walton through Aintree to St Helens and Salford. PHV usage spikes on match-days for Anfield and Goodison, on Aintree race-week, and on night-time return journeys to Sefton, Knowsley and St Helens addresses. Higher speeds and merging traffic produce the classic side-impact and rear-shunt patterns.

A562 Aigburth Road. The southern arterial running from the city centre out through Toxteth, Aigburth, Garston, Speke and on to John Lennon Airport. A heavy airport-transfer route for the Liverpool PHV market, with bus-lane interaction and pedestrian-crossing collisions concentrated in the Aigburth and Garston stretches.

Mersey Tunnels (Queensway and Kingsway) approaches. The Queensway approach at Old Haymarket and the Kingsway approach at Scotland Road are the two slow-moving merge points into the toll plazas. Lane-change collisions, rear-end shunts at the booth approach and incidents inside the bore itself are handled by Merseytravel tunnel patrol officers. Tunnel incidents trigger a Merseytravel incident reference and CCTV pull that the claim file should request promptly.

L1 / L2 / L3 night-economy corridors. Concert Square, Seel Street, Bold Street and Wood Street (L1) and Mathew Street and Stanley Street (L2 Cavern Quarter) are the late-night PHV pick-up clusters. The recurring files are intoxicated-passenger disputes, pedestrian step-out collisions, pinch-point collisions at Whitechapel and North John Street and night-time cyclist incidents on Wood Street and Renshaw Street. The L3 Albert Dock and Pier Head corridor produces tourist-pedestrian step-out files in the warmer months.

Liverpool operators beyond Delta - Davy Liver, Comcab, Mersey Cabs and others

Liverpool's licensed-operator market has more than 100 section 55 LGMPA 1976 operators on the LCC public register, but the bulk of the night-economy and day-time volume sits with a small cluster of operators alongside Delta.

Davy Liver Limited (Companies House 00988509) is a long-established Liverpool operator trading from 21 Stafford Street, Liverpool L3 8LX. The Davy Liver brand traces its roots to Liver Cars in the early 1950s and the operator has run a mixed hackney and PHV bookings fleet for several decades. Comcab Liverpool runs the city's high-end and corporate transfer segment under a national Comcab brand. Other operators that appear regularly on Liverpool incident files include Mersey Cabs, Phoenix Cabs, Blue Line Cars, Argyle Satellite, Cherry Lane Taxis and Halewood Taxis on the southern arterials. The Uber, Bolt and FreeNow platform operators are also licensed by LCC as section 55 operators and run substantial driver pools alongside the local circuits.

A judgement note on operator identification: the operator the passenger sees in the booking app, on the SMS confirmation or on the booking-line phone receipt is the section 55 operator that took the booking and is the operator on the section 56 deemed contract. The driver may be running a different operator's plate on the rear (under a sub-contracting arrangement). For the claim file, both operator entities and the driver are the relevant parties; pleadings often name all three and run the operator liability arguments in the alternative. CityGrip records each on intake.

Liverpool air quality, Mersey Tunnels tolls and recoverable charges

Liverpool City Council consulted publicly on a charging Clean Air Zone (CAZ) during the Liverpool Clean Air Plan workstream. The council ultimately decided not to introduce a charging CAZ. The reasoning the council published is that modelled CAZ classes did not resolve every forecast NO₂ exceedance, that the affordability impact on Liverpool residents and businesses was significant, and that public-transport investment was a more effective lever in the city's circumstances. As of 2026, therefore, Liverpool has no charging CAZ inside the city boundary, and a PHV driver does not pay a daily Liverpool CAZ tariff. This is a material divergence from Birmingham (CAZ Class D since 2021), Sheffield, Bradford, Bristol, Bath, Newcastle / Gateshead and London (ULEZ).

The tolls that do apply are the Mersey Tunnels (Queensway and Kingsway) under the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Merseytravel. A passenger car is in Class 2. From 1 April 2026 the proposed Class 2 cash toll is £2.40, with the discounted T-FLOW rate for Liverpool City Region residents at £1.60. PHV drivers running cross-river bookings (Wirral pick-ups, Birkenhead drop-offs, Wallasey return legs) pay the toll on every crossing. Where the working pattern includes regular tunnel use, the round-trip toll cost is recoverable in the loss-of-earnings calculation for the off-road period and is recoverable on the replacement-vehicle build for the period of credit hire.

For accident scenes inside the tunnel bores or at the approach plazas, Merseytravel's tunnel patrol attends, issues an incident reference and preserves the in-bore CCTV. The CCTV-preservation request should go in writing inside the data-retention window (Merseytravel does not retain inside-bore CCTV indefinitely) and should quote the tunnel-incident reference from the attending officer.

Post-accident inspection at an LCC-approved testing station

Liverpool's licence conditions require a post-collision re-inspection at an LCC-approved vehicle testing station before the plate returns to active use. The council publishes the current list of approved stations on the vehicle-specifications and approved-testing-stations page at liverpool.gov.uk. The same checklist that runs at the annual plate examination runs at the re-inspection, plus an additional structural element where the repair pack shows welding, chassis straightening or panel replacement on a structural section.

The driver presents the vehicle with the bodyshop repair invoice, the replaced-part documentation, the welder's certifications where the repair involved welding and the independent engineer's sign-off report. The examiner records the inspection outcome on an LCC inspection sheet, which is the document the licensing officer relies on when restoring the plate. Outcomes follow the usual three: pass (plate restored), conditional pass (plate restored subject to a re-test within a specified window) or refusal (Notice of Suspension under section 60 LGMPA 1976 until further work is done; in extreme cases a Notice of Revocation).

The cost of the inspection is borne by the driver in the first instance and is recoverable from the at-fault driver's insurer as a head of special damages, on the same basis as the bodyshop costs. CityGrip's panel independent engineers regularly attend Liverpool approved stations with the driver to present the repair pack and to handle any technical query that arises during the inspection.

Three Liverpool scenarios that come through the desk every week

Scenario one - the Mersey Tunnel rear-shunt. A Delta driver with a passenger in the rear seat is queueing for the Queensway toll plaza on a Saturday night. The vehicle behind misjudges the brake-down speed and rear-shunts at maybe ten miles per hour. The passenger reports mild whiplash; the bodyshop estimates around £1,400 of repair to the rear quarter and boot lid. The third party's insurer is identified from the section 154 RTA 1988 disclosure. Notification goes to Merseytravel (tunnel-incident reference), LCC Licensing (section 48 vehicle notification), Delta Taxis Ltd (operator-side incident report) and the driver's Zego hire-and-reward policy. The passenger's PSLA claim runs through the Official Injury Claim portal because it is under the £5,000 small-claims-track threshold; the driver's loss-of-earnings build runs off Delta circuit data for the six weeks before the collision.

Scenario two - the Anfield match-day side-impact. A Bolt driver plated by Knowsley is dropping off a passenger on Walton Lane forty minutes after kick-off. An oncoming vehicle clips the offside front wing on a tight turn into Anfield Road. The collision is moderate but the driver's vehicle is off-road for three weeks. Notification routes to Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council Licensing (because the plate is Knowsley's, not Liverpool's), to Bolt under the in-app safety toolkit, and to the driver's Inshur policy. The like-for-like replacement is a Knowsley-plated PHV from a specialist credit-hire fleet, run on the credit-hire agreement so the period of hire ends when the Knowsley re-inspection passes - not when the bodyshop hands over the keys.

Scenario three - the A580 East Lancs Road motorway-adjacent claim. A Davy Liver hackney is travelling east-bound on the A580 dual-carriageway at a steady fifty miles per hour around half past one in the morning. An articulated HGV in the inside lane drifts on a slow merge and contacts the offside of the hackney; both vehicles come to rest on the verge. Police attend; an incident reference is issued. The HGV is fleet-insured; the fleet insurer's claims line takes the notification. The hackney is recovered to an LCC-approved storage facility, the structural damage is assessed by an independent engineer, and the bodyshop repair pack is built to PAS 125 / BS 10125 standard before the LCC re-inspection. The driver's loss of earnings is substantial because hackney work in Liverpool runs on a higher hourly average than PHV; the claim is built off two months of meter receipts plus the rank-marshal records.

Three parallel notifications - operator, council, hire-and-reward insurer

A Liverpool PHV collision triggers three separate notification streams. First, the booking operator - Delta, Davy Liver, Bolt, Uber, FreeNow or the particular Liverpool circuit that took the booking - under the operator's contractor terms and its section 55 LGMPA 1976 operator licence conditions. Liverpool operator-side norm is notification inside twenty-four hours, attaching the photographs, dashcam clip and a short factual narrative. The operator's incident reference is the document the at-fault insurer's claims handler will ask for.

Second, the licensing authority - Liverpool City Council Licensing and Regulatory Services if the plate is LCC, or Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley or St Helens if the plate is one of the neighbouring authorities'. The statutory window is the one the licence condition imposes (commonly a 72-hour rule, sometimes by the next working day). The notification has to be in writing and should attach the same evidence pack as the operator notification. The vehicle is then booked in for re-inspection at an LCC-approved station before it carries fare-paying passengers again.

Third, the driver's hire-and-reward insurer - Zego (including Zego Sense where the driver is rated on telematics), Inshur, Markel, Acorn Insurance, Patons, the Aviva-backed schemes or the operator-bundled rental insurance on an Addison Lee-style structure. The notice period is the policy wording's - as soon as reasonably practicable, commonly seven days as the policy backstop. The notification preserves both the third-party claim and any first-party cover for the driver's own vehicle.

Loss-of-earnings evidence on Liverpool platform data

For a self-employed Liverpool PHV driver the recoverable head of loss is net earnings, not gross fares. Build the evidence pack from six to eight weeks of contemporaneous documents: Delta circuit booking-and-payment statements, Uber Pro weekly earnings statements, Bolt Drive weekly payouts, FreeNow statements where applicable, the corresponding bank credits, fuel receipts (Liverpool's two principal arterials produce different fuel-cost profiles - lower on the A580 dual-carriageway, higher on the slow A562 Aigburth Road), vehicle finance or rental statements, hire-and-reward insurance premium receipts and the most recent SA302 tax calculation issued by HMRC.

Deductions from the gross fare side: operator commission (Delta's circuit fee, Uber's standard UK commission, Bolt's commission, FreeNow's standard rate), fuel at actual receipts, an apportionment of fixed costs (vehicle rental or finance, insurance, MOT) over the hours actually worked, vehicle depreciation on a reasonable basis, and Class 2 / Class 4 National Insurance contributions. For drivers who use the Mersey Tunnels routinely, the round- trip Class 2 toll (Queensway or Kingsway) is a recoverable item - at the T-FLOW rate where the driver holds a Liverpool City Region T-FLOW account.

The resulting figure is the driver's net hourly take. Multiply by the hours the driver would have worked in the off-road period (set by the LCC re- inspection date, not the bodyshop hand-back) and you have the loss-of- earnings claim. The duty to mitigate runs throughout: the driver must return to work as soon as it is safe to do so, on a like-for-like LCC-plated replacement if one can be sourced from a specialist credit-hire fleet.

Like-for-like replacement that itself carries an LCC plate

A non-fault Liverpool PHV driver's right to a like-for-like replacement is the common-law rule in Dimond v Lovell [2000] UKHL 27 and the impecuniosity rule in Lagden v O'Connor [2003] UKHL 64. Defendant insurers pay credit hire where the claimant cannot afford the basic hire rate up front and pay the basic hire rate where the claimant can. For a working Liverpool minicab driver the like-for-like question has a sharper answer than for a private motorist: the replacement vehicle must itself carry a hire-and-reward PHV plate from the same authority - an LCC plate for an LCC-licensed driver - and must be insured for hire-and-reward.

A standard private courtesy car cannot lawfully carry fare-paying passengers under section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, breaches the LCC operator terms and breaches the driver's hire-and-reward policy conditions. It is therefore not a like-for-like replacement for the Liverpool PHV market. The replacement vehicle is drawn from a specialist licensed-PHV credit-hire fleet on a credit-hire agreement that names the period of hire, the rate, the period over which fares are forecast to be earned and the driver's duty to mitigate.

Period of hire ends when the driver's own vehicle is back on the road with an active LCC plate, not when the bodyshop hands it over. That distinction is the single most common source of dispute on a Liverpool credit-hire file - the at-fault insurer's audit team frequently challenges the gap between bodyshop sign-off and the LCC plate-restoration date. The defendant insurer pays through to plate restoration provided the period of hire is reasonable on the evidence; CityGrip's policy is to record the LCC examiner's booking slot at intake so the period of hire is documented from the start.

Liverpool PHV passenger rights and the Official Injury Claim portal

A passenger injured in a Liverpool minicab has the same RTA rights as any other UK road traffic victim. Low-value injury - pain, suffering and loss of amenity valued at £5,000 or less - runs through the Official Injury Claim portal at officialinjuryclaim.org.uk under the small-claims-track changes introduced by the Civil Liability Act 2018. The whiplash tariff brought in by the Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021 (and amended subsequently) fixes the general damages figure for whiplash and minor psychological injury inside the tariff bands. CityGrip is not a firm of solicitors; we signpost passengers to the OIC portal where the claim fits and refer to SRA-regulated panel solicitors on disclosed referral terms where the claim exceeds the portal threshold.

Liverpool-specific overlays for passenger claims: passenger-handling duties under section 165 and section 167 of the Equality Act 2010 bind every Liverpool PHV driver and operator - wheelchair-using passengers must be carried without surcharge. Breach is enforced by LCC under the section 61 fitness gateway and is increasingly a stand-alone civil head of claim. The operator who accepted the booking (Delta, Davy Liver, Bolt, Uber) is jointly responsible under section 56 LGMPA 1976 and the operator's own conditions.

The Highway Code rule H1 hierarchy of road users - under which drivers of larger and faster vehicles carry the higher duty of care to more vulnerable users - applies to the Liverpool PHV driver carrying a passenger. Inside the vehicle the passenger is a low-control, high-vulnerability user, and the evidential tilt at trial favours the passenger on disputed facts. That principle matters most on the late-night night-economy files where the facts are usually contested.

How CityGrip handles a Liverpool minicab file from day one

Day one: intake call. We log the plate text and the issuing authority, the section 55 operator on the booking, the driver licence number, the hire-and-reward insurer, the collision location with grid reference, the section 170 RTA 1988 details for every other driver, the police incident reference where police attended and any Merseytravel tunnel-incident reference. We confirm the section 154 RTA 1988 disclosure has produced the at-fault insurer's name and policy reference.

Day one to day three: notification stream. Written notifications go to the licensing authority that issued the plate, the booking operator and the hire-and-reward insurer, each with the evidence pack attached. The vehicle is recovered to an LCC-approved storage facility (or the equivalent in the neighbouring authority) and the engineer instruction is sent. The replacement-vehicle credit-hire agreement is drawn and signed. The loss-of-earnings template is sent to the driver with the eight-week evidence list.

Day three onward: the file runs. The bodyshop repair pack is built to PAS 125 / BS 10125. The engineer's report fixes the repair scope or the Cat S / Cat N salvage view. The LCC re-inspection is booked. The loss-of-earnings build closes on the platform data. The third-party claim correspondence runs with the at-fault insurer. The passenger PSLA route is referred to the OIC portal or to panel solicitors where the value exceeds the threshold. The file closes when the LCC plate is restored, the third-party indemnity is in place and the driver is back in active work.

Related Liverpool and UK minicab claim topics

This Liverpool page sits below the UK minicab hub. The hub covers the national PHV regulatory architecture, the App-On / Trip-Active / Idle three-state insurance model, the platform top-up layer for Uber, Bolt, Addison Lee and FreeNow, the MIB Uninsured Drivers' Agreement route, the Cat S / Cat N salvage rules and the Official Injury Claim portal.

• UK minicab accident claims (hub)
• Local authority PHV licence and accidents
• Local minicab firm accident claims
• Uber accident claims
• Bolt accident claims
• Hire-and-reward insurance claims
• Private hire accident claims
• Credit hire

Six-step Liverpool PHV post-accident notification flow

1. Step 1

   Make the scene safe and comply with section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988

   Stop, set hazards, check the passenger and exchange names, addresses, vehicle registration and insurance details under section 170(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Where the collision is inside a Mersey Tunnel or at a tunnel approach (Queensway entry at New Quay or Kingsway entry at Scotland Road), Merseytravel tunnel patrol officers attend; follow their directions. If anyone is injured or details are not exchanged at the scene, report the collision to Merseyside Police on 101 within 24 hours as section 170(3) requires.

2. Step 2

   Preserve the dashcam footage and photograph the scene

   Most loop dashcams overwrite inside twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so extract the front and rear clips immediately and back them up. Photograph the position of every vehicle before it is moved, all registration plates, the road surface (the A565 cobbled sections, A580 fast-lane debris and the tunnel-approach lane markings are the highest-value evidence in Liverpool files), traffic signals and weather conditions. Save each file with date, time and a one-line description.

3. Step 3

   Notify Delta Taxis or your booking operator within twenty-four hours

   Open the in-app safety toolkit of the operator that took the booking (Delta Taxis, Davy Liver, Comcab Liverpool, Phoenix, Blue Line Cars or the Bolt / Uber / FreeNow platform) and submit the incident report. The Liverpool operator-side norm is notification inside twenty-four hours. Attach the photographs, the dashcam clip and a short factual narrative. Keep the operator's reference number - it is the document the at-fault insurer's claims handler will ask for.

4. Step 4

   Notify Liverpool City Council Licensing and Regulatory Services

   Write to Licensing and Regulatory Services at the Cunard Building, Water Street, Liverpool L3 1AH (telephone 0151 233 3015), reporting the collision and the vehicle's plate number. LCC's licence conditions made under section 48 of the LGMPA 1976 require notification of any collision that materially affects the safety, performance, appearance or comfort of the vehicle and require the vehicle to be re-inspected at an LCC-approved testing station before it carries fare-paying passengers again. If a Wirral, Sefton, Knowsley or St Helens authority issued the plate, the notification goes to that authority instead.

5. Step 5

   Notify your hire-and-reward insurer and open the third-party claim

   Your specialist hire-and-reward insurer (Zego, Inshur, Markel, Acorn, the Aviva-backed schemes that dominate the Liverpool market) requires written notification inside the policy wording's notice period, usually as soon as reasonably practicable and within seven days at the latest. Open the third-party claim against the at-fault driver's insurer at the same time - the at-fault insurer is identified from the other driver's certificate of motor insurance under section 154 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.

6. Step 6

   Arrange a like-for-like licensed PHV replacement and document the loss of earnings

   A non-fault Liverpool PHV driver is entitled to a like-for-like replacement under Dimond v Lovell [2000] UKHL 27 and Lagden v O'Connor [2003] UKHL 64 - and 'like-for-like' for a working Liverpool minicab means a vehicle that itself carries an LCC PHV plate (or the equivalent neighbouring-authority plate) and a hire-and-reward certificate, not a standard private courtesy car. Run the loss-of-earnings build from six to eight weeks of Delta, Bolt, Uber or Davy Liver platform statements, fuel receipts, the latest SA302 and tunnel-toll receipts where cross-river bookings are part of the working pattern.