Why is Wolverhampton Council licensing thousands of taxi drivers in Greater Manchester?

Catch an Uber across Manchester and it's likely you'll notice an unfamiliar badge on the vehicle.

Many of the cabs have Wolverhampton City Council plates, despite the driver operating halfway across the country.

The biggest question is why the drivers of these taxis, officially known as private hire vehicles, would get licensed with a council 80 miles from where they work.

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The Manchester Evening News has reported widely on the issue of 'out of town' licensing, and now we have taken a closer look at the figures to try to work out why this keeps happening.

Within Greater Manchester, there are 8,952 drivers registered to the midlands-based council, according to a Freedom of Information request (FOI) submitted by the M.E.N. This number makes up around 35 per cent of all the private hire drivers in the city-region.

It is understood that the main reason drivers register in Wolverhampton instead of the region they operate in is because it's a regarded as an easier, quicker and cheaper licensing regime.

But it's left other drivers feeling angry. Some black cab motorists have been left infuriated by the fact they have to compete with drivers who have 'shopped around to get a licence under a less stringent regime'.

Wolverhampton Council have denied, on a number of occasions, that their licensing process is easier and cheaper.

Last year, the M.E.N went down to the taxi rank around Manchester Piccadilly station to hear what the drivers with the ‘out of town plates’ had to say themselves. A number of them argued that Wolverhampton was simply offering drivers a better service than they could get locally.

At the time, Uber driver Shakeel