Local minicab firm accident claims - Veezu, Delta, A2B and the UK independents

Two business models: owner-operator and fleet-operator

Every UK local minicab firm sits somewhere on a spectrum between two business models. At one end is the pure owner-operator firm. Here the driver owns the vehicle outright, holds the V5C in their own name, pays the road tax themselves and buys their own hire-and-reward motor insurance. The firm contributes three things: the operator licence under which bookings are lawfully accepted, the dispatch infrastructure (a controller, a radio circuit or an app), and a brand the driver displays on the vehicle and the receipt. The firm earns from a fixed weekly fee - historically called the radio rent or circuit fee - rather than a per-trip percentage commission. The driver carries the working capital risk, the vehicle finance risk and the insurance excess. This is the model under which most Delta Taxis, A2B Radio Cars and historic Veezu-acquired drivers operate, and it is also the model the long tail of council-licensed independents in Greater Manchester runs.

At the other end is the pure fleet-operator firm. The firm owns the vehicles, holds them on a fleet hire-and-reward policy and rents them out on a shift basis to self-employed drivers. The driver pays a shift fee - a fixed sum for a fixed period of access to the car and the bookings - and keeps the difference between gross fares and the shift fee plus fuel. The classic UK fleet-operator example in the platform world is Addison Lee in London; in the non-platform local-firm world a fleet wing typically sits alongside an owner-operator circuit, with newer cars, wheelchair-accessible vehicles and special-occasion executive saloons more likely to be on the fleet side.

The two models matter because they decide which insurance policy is on risk on the day of the collision and which losses are recoverable by whom. In an owner-operator collision the driver's own hire-and-reward policy responds; the vehicle-damage claim is the driver's claim against the at-fault insurer; loss of earnings is the driver's claim too. In a fleet-operator collision the firm's fleet hire-and-reward policy responds for the vehicle damage; the firm's policy excess and any uninsured loss become the firm's claim against the at-fault insurer; the driver's only recoverable head of loss is loss of earnings during the period the firm cannot allocate them a vehicle to drive. Identifying which model is on the file is the first practical question on intake.

Veezu Group: Cardiff-headquartered, multi-city, owner-operator at the front line

Veezu Group is the most significant non-platform consolidator in the UK private hire market. The holding company, Veezu Holdings Limited (Companies House number 09378357), is headquartered at Hodge House in central Cardiff. Veezu has grown by acquiring established local minicab brands rather than launching greenfield in new cities. The current verified Veezu footprint includes Cardiff, Newport, Cwmbran and the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales; Bristol, Bath, Chippenham and Swindon in the South West (acquired through the V-Cars and related brands); Sheffield and South Yorkshire (acquired through City Taxis and later Excel); Wakefield and parts of West Yorkshire; and operations in the West Midlands. Veezu has stated an ambition to operate a hub in every UK region. The exact current scope should be verified before a particular accident file is pleaded.

The Veezu operating model at the front line is owner-operator. In each city Veezu holds the operator licence with the relevant council - Cardiff Council in Wales, Bristol City Council in the South West, Sheffield City Council in Yorkshire and so on - and the driver holds the council's PHV driver licence and the council's vehicle plate on their own car. The driver buys their own hire-and-reward motor insurance from a specialist underwriter such as Zego, Inshur, Markel or Acorn. Veezu provides the booking app, the dispatch infrastructure and the brand; it does not in the ordinary owner-operator arrangement provide a platform-style top-up insurance layer above the driver's own cover.

The implication for an accident file is that the headline insurer on a Veezu collision is the driver's own hire-and-reward underwriter, not Veezu and not a Veezu-branded platform policy. Veezu's role in the file is the role of a section 3 PHV(L)A 1998 or section 55 LGMPA 1976 operator licensee: it has a booking record, it has the controller log of the journey, it may have GPS trace from its dispatch app, and it has a statutory duty to maintain the operator record under the licence conditions of each council it operates under. Those records are typically obtainable on a reasoned request, and they are valuable evidence on a contested liability file.

Delta Taxis Liverpool: D.E.L.T.A. Merseyside Limited and the circuit model

Delta Taxis is Liverpool's largest private hire vehicle operator and one of the most recognisable local minicab brands in the North West of England. The principal Liverpool operating entity is D.E.L.T.A. Merseyside Limited (Companies House number 04271743), registered at 200 Strand Road, Bootle, Merseyside, L20 3HL. The operator licence is held with Liverpool City Council under section 55 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, and the council issues the PHV vehicle and driver plates the Delta drivers carry. The trading status of the operating entity should be verified at Companies House before any pleadings are settled; corporate structure in the Liverpool PHV market has moved over the years and the canonical entity number is 04271743.

The Delta model is a circuit-style dispatcher operation. Drivers sign in to the circuit at the start of their working day, accept jobs allocated by the controller through the in-car data terminal and pay Delta a weekly fee for access to the circuit, the dispatch and the brand. The vehicle is the driver's own car under the standard arrangement. The driver buys their own hire-and-reward policy with Liverpool City Council vehicle plates on the back. There is no platform-style top-up cover that sits above the driver's policy during a Delta booking - the driver's certificate of motor insurance must therefore be Class 1, Class 2 or Class 3 hire-and-reward for the use being made of the vehicle.

After a collision the Delta driver radios the controller from the scene. The controller logs the time, the location and the headline facts and escalates to duty management. The driver then submits a written incident report - most commonly inside 24 hours - to the operator under the council licence conditions. Delta in turn updates the council on any material damage and the vehicle is presented to Liverpool City Council's licensing inspectors before the plate is returned to active service. On the insurer side, the driver's own hire-and-reward underwriter is notified the same day. The full evidence pack - section 170 details, scene photographs, dashcam clip, police reference where one applies - is sent to both the operator and the insurer.

A2B Radio Cars Birmingham: the West Midlands non-platform incumbent

A2B Radio Cars has been the largest non-platform private hire operator in Birmingham for many years. The corporate entity recorded at Companies House, A2B Radio Cars Limited (Companies House number 02652297), traded from Blucher Street in central Birmingham. The trading status of the named limited company should be checked directly at Companies House before pleadings are settled - the corporate structure under which the A2B brand has operated has not been static, and a pleading or letter of claim should name the entity that was operating at the date of the index incident.

The Birmingham operating model has historically been owner-operator at the front line. The driver holds the Birmingham City Council PHV vehicle plate and driver licence, owns the vehicle and carries their own hire-and-reward motor insurance. The operator licence under section 55 LGMPA 1976 is held by the A2B corporate entity with Birmingham City Council. The driver pays the operator a weekly fee for circuit access - the standard radio-rent arrangement that has operated in the Birmingham PHV market for decades. As with Delta in Liverpool and Veezu in Cardiff, there is no platform-style insurance top-up that sits above the driver's own policy during a booking taken through A2B.

For an accident involving an A2B-livery vehicle the practical steps are the same as on a Delta or Veezu file. The driver radios the controller from the scene. The controller logs the incident and escalates internally. The driver submits a written incident report to the operator within the firm's notification window. The driver's own hire-and-reward insurer is notified the same day. The vehicle is presented to Birmingham City Council's PHV inspectors before the plate is returned to active service. Where the at-fault driver was uninsured, the route to compensation is the Motor Insurers' Bureau Uninsured Drivers' Agreement on the same basis as any other UK road traffic collision.

Greater Manchester independents and the cross-border problem

Greater Manchester's non-platform PHV market is distinct from the Liverpool, Birmingham and Cardiff markets in one important respect: it is fragmented. There is no single dominant non-platform corporate brand of the same scale as Delta, A2B or Veezu. Instead the market is carried by a long list of council-licensed independents - Club Cars Manchester, Intime Taxis, Lynch Private Hire, All-United Cars and many others - each operating under a section 55 LGMPA 1976 operator licence with Manchester City Council or one of the nine other Greater Manchester districts (Trafford, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Bury, Bolton, Rochdale, Oldham, Wigan). The Greater Manchester Combined Authority has long argued for a single Greater Manchester-wide regime; at the time of writing each of the ten districts continues to license PHVs separately.

That fragmentation produces a cross-border problem of its own - internal to Greater Manchester - on top of the well-known national cross-border issue with Wolverhampton-plated drivers working in other cities. A Trafford-licensed driver working a Manchester booking is in cross-border territory in the same sense as a Wolverhampton-licensed driver in Liverpool, even if they have lived in the Manchester conurbation all their working life. Section 11 of the Deregulation Act 2015 inserted section 55B into the LGMPA 1976 to allow a private hire operator licensed in one district to sub-contract a booking to an operator licensed in another district. The Act is the legislative origin of UK cross-border PHV activity and was the subject of the October 2024 House of Commons debate that examined its continued effects.

For an accident file the cross-border question matters because the licensing authority that has jurisdiction over the vehicle plate is the authority that must be notified after a material collision and the authority whose inspectors must clear the vehicle before the plate is reactivated. If a Stockport-plated driver is in a collision while working a Manchester booking, the Stockport inspectors clear the vehicle; if a Manchester-plated driver is in a collision while working a Salford booking, the Manchester inspectors clear it. Get the plate authority right and the operator-side correspondence runs cleanly; get it wrong and the plate sits suspended longer than it has to.

The driver's hire-and-reward insurance is primary - there is no platform top-up

The single biggest difference between a non-platform local-firm collision and an Uber or Bolt collision is the absence of a platform-side top-up insurance layer. On Uber, the driver's own hire-and-reward policy responds in the Idle and App-On states and the platform layers Partner Protection on top in the Trip-Active state; on Bolt the structure is similar, with Zego Sense and comparable telematics-rated products in widespread use. On Veezu, Delta and A2B the cover is the driver's certificate of motor insurance - full stop. The operator is not in the insurance chain. There is no Trip-Active state in the Uber sense.

Section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires every motor vehicle on a road to be insured against third-party risks for the use being made of it. A social, domestic and pleasure certificate does not satisfy that requirement when a fare-paying passenger is in the car. A local-firm driver caught carrying a passenger on an SD&P policy is uninsured for the purpose of s.143, faces six-points-plus-fine sanction under s.143(2), and finds their cover voided for the index trip. The driver must therefore hold valid Class 1, Class 2 or Class 3 hire-and-reward cover at the level appropriate to the use being made of the vehicle. The major UK hire-and-reward underwriters that quote on this segment include Zego, Inshur, Markel, Acorn Insurance, Patons and Aviva-backed schemes.

For a non-fault claim file under the at-fault driver's insurer, the position is straightforward - the at-fault insurer pays for the loss it caused - but the driver-policy question becomes decisive in two situations. First, where liability is disputed and the at-fault insurer asks for the certificate of motor insurance, the certificate must show hire-and-reward use in force on the day of the collision. Second, where the driver wants to advance a credit-hire or credit-repair claim, the at-fault insurer's first line of challenge will be an enquiry into the validity of the underlying cover at the moment of the collision. Keep the certificate. Keep the schedule. Keep the policy wording.

Operator licensee duties under PHV(L)A 1998 section 3 and LGMPA 1976 section 55

The operator licence is the gatekeeping statutory licence for non-platform local minicab work. Inside London the licence is held with Transport for London under section 3 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998. Outside London the licence is held with the licensing authority of the district council in which the operator's base is located, under section 55 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. The licence carries with it a set of statutory and licence-condition duties: record-keeping for every booking, driver and vehicle checks, complaint handling, accident reporting and (in many authority areas) a duty for the operator to insure its own business against passenger-side claims.

Section 56 LGMPA 1976 deems the booking contract to be with the operator who accepted the booking, irrespective of whether that operator actually provides the vehicle. Section 55B (inserted by section 11 of the Deregulation Act 2015) governs sub-contracting to operators in other districts. The starting position in UK common law is that an operator is not vicariously liable for the negligent driving of a self-employed owner-operator driver in the same way an employer is liable for the negligence of an employee. But the operator is potentially directly liable for breach of its own statutory and licence-condition duties - for example failing to check the driver's hire-and-reward cover at onboarding, failing to maintain the booking record, despatching an unlicensed vehicle, or sub-contracting outside the section 55B route. Some council licence regimes impose joint liability for specific booking-acceptance failures; the authority's published conditions must therefore be checked, not assumed.

In practice a contested passenger claim against a non-platform local firm will usually plead the at-fault driver as the first defendant, the driver's hire-and-reward insurer as second defendant under the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010, and the operator as third defendant on a fact-specific direct-liability basis. The pleading runs liability in the alternative and the practical question on settlement is which defendant has the cover and the appetite to resolve. The operator's booking record, controller log and dispatch GPS trace are evidence in every such file.

Loss of earnings on weekly settlement statements - more stable than gig data

The recoverable head of loss for a self-employed local-firm driver is net loss of earnings, not gross fares. The good news on a local-firm file is that the evidence base is usually more stable than gig-economy app earnings: the firm runs a Friday or Sunday cash-up cycle that produces a printed or downloadable weekly settlement statement showing the driver's gross fares for the week, less the firm's circuit fee, account-work commission, card-fee deductions and (where applicable) shift-rental. Six to eight weeks of those statements is the spine of the loss-of-earnings build. Paired with the driver's bank credits, fuel receipts, vehicle finance or rental statements, insurance premium receipts and the latest HMRC SA302 tax calculation, you have a defensible net hourly figure that the at-fault insurer's lawyers cannot easily attack.

The settlement statement matters in three ways the gig-economy app data does not. First, it shows the firm's deduction up front - the circuit fee is a fixed weekly sum, not a per-trip percentage, and that fixed sum is the correct figure to net out. Second, it shows account-work commission on the corporate-account jobs the firm has fed the driver. Third, it shows card-fee deductions on passenger card payments. Each of those is netted out in turn to produce the driver's true take-home, which is then multiplied by the hours the driver would have worked in the off-road period to produce the loss-of-earnings claim.

Two adjustments matter. The duty to mitigate applies: the driver must return to work as soon as it is safe to do so, on a replacement vehicle if one can be sourced, and the period of off-road need is the period from the collision to the date the vehicle is licensed again, not the date the bodyshop hands over the keys. And the credibility test the at-fault insurer will run against the bank statements and the SA302 must be passed: the figures in the settlement statements must reconcile to the bank credits, the SA302 must show income at roughly the same run rate, and the fuel and finance deductions must match the actual receipts and statements. Keep the originals.

Up to the hub, across to the platform pages and adjacent topics

The local-firm page sits inside the wider UK minicab vertical. The hub page above carries the cross-platform regulatory frame; the per-platform pages give the carrier-by-carrier breakdown; the adjacent pages cover the underlying topics - hire-and-reward insurance, council PHV licence implications, credit hire and fleet accident management.

• Up to the UK minicab / PHV hub
• Hire-and-reward insurance claims
• Local authority PHV licence and accidents
• Uber accident claims
• Bolt accident claims

Adjacent topics on the wider site

• Private hire accident claims
• Credit hire
• Fleet accident management

Six-step post-incident flow for a non-platform local-firm driver

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 with every driver involved. If anyone is injured or details are not exchanged at the scene, you must report the collision to a police station or constable as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event within 24 hours. Note the dashcam timestamp before vehicles are moved.

2. Step 2

   Radio or call the firm's controller from the scene

   The local-firm notification flow is dispatcher-led. Press the radio talk-button or call the controller line published in your driver handbook - Delta drivers use the Delta circuit, Veezu drivers use the Veezu driver app and controller line, A2B drivers use the A2B controller. Read the controller a short factual summary: location, time, vehicle registrations, whether anyone is injured, whether police have been called. The controller logs the call and escalates to duty management.

3. Step 3

   Photograph the scene and preserve the dashcam clip

   Photograph every vehicle's position, registration plates, damage, road markings, signage, traffic lights and weather conditions before any vehicle is moved. Extract and back up the dashcam clip immediately - most consumer devices loop after 24 to 48 hours and a deleted clip cannot be retrieved on the operator's side. Save the file with the date, time and a one-line description of the incident.

4. Step 4

   Submit the written incident report to the operator within 24 to 72 hours

   Most local-firm driver contracts and council operator-licence conditions require a written follow-up to the operator inside 24 to 72 hours. Attach the photographs, dashcam clip, a short factual narrative, the other driver's section 170 details, the police reference where one applies and the certificate of motor insurance. Keep the firm's incident reference number - this is the spine of the operator's record under section 55 LGMPA 1976 outside London or section 3 PHV(L)A 1998 inside London.

5. Step 5

   Notify your hire-and-reward insurer (or, in a fleet vehicle, ask the firm to notify the fleet insurer)

   Owner-operator drivers must notify their own hire-and-reward insurer regardless of fault - Zego, Inshur, Markel, Acorn, Aviva or whichever underwriter is on cover. Failure to notify within the policy's time limit can prejudice both the third-party claim and any first-party cover for the vehicle. Provide the same evidence pack you sent the operator. Fleet-driver drivers should formally request in writing that the firm notify the fleet hire-and-reward insurer that day.

6. Step 6

   Notify the licensing authority where the licence conditions require it, and present the vehicle for re-inspection

   Outside London the council's licence conditions issued under section 48 LGMPA 1976 normally require notification of a material collision within 72 hours and may require the vehicle to be re-presented for inspection before it carries passengers again. Inside London the TfL licensee responsibilities run the same way. Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff, Sheffield, Manchester and most other authorities operate a re-inspection regime - the plate is at risk until the authority is satisfied. Keep proof of the notification email and the re-inspection booking.