Reporting touting and illegal cab activity

Licensed and law abiding taxi and private hire drivers and other members of the public often have valuable information on touting and other cab-related offences across London.

If you have information then please let us know. Such information is valuable in helping our Safer Transport Command tackle the problem.

What is touting?

  • Any private hire vehicle that isn’t booked, isn’t legal and isn’t safe
  • Only taxis (black cabs) can be hailed and can pick up customers on the street without a booking
  • If a private hire or minicab driver approaches you on the street or accepts your journey without a booking it is illegal, even if the driver is licensed by TfL

Drivers that tout are committing a criminal offence under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Drivers arrested and charged with touting are also charged with having no valid insurance (for carrying passengers).

Drivers that tout for business are commonly referred to as touts, illegal cabs or unbooked minicabs.

Taxi driver identifiers

All taxi drivers are required to display driver identifiers when plying for hire as a condition of licence.

If you witness a driver not displaying their identifiers, displaying the wrong identifiers or you suspect displaying fake identifiers, or who may be plying for hire outside of their licence area, report this to us by filling out the form below.

It is intended that any such reports will be used to identify future intelligence operations and no specific action will be taken against an individual driver as a result of one report from another driver. However, should a driver come to our attention on more than one occasion, or if a specific area comes up several times, further investigation is likely to take place.

Reporting

If you have information about touting or other illegal cab activity, please use this form. When submitting a report, please provide as much detail as possible about the incident or issue.

Please note you should not use this form if you are reporting a specific crime or require a real time response. If you are reporting a crime or require a response then you should report the incident directly to the Metropolitan Police Service on 0300 123 1212 (24 hour). In an emergency call 999.

You can report illegal taxi touting by following this link…HERE