Renewing your licence

Where possible, we will send you a reminder by email or text to renew your licence before it expires. 

It is your responsibility to ensure you renew your hackney carriage or private hire driver’s licence before it expires.

We strongly advise you to allow plenty of time and book an appointment that falls at least four to six weeks before your licence expires.

If your licence has expired

We can only renew an expired licence in exceptional circumstances or if you have missed the renewal by a couple of days. If you let your licence expire and make a request for a late renewal, we will ask you to provide evidence of your exceptional circumstances.

If we are not satisfied, we will not allow the renewal. In those circumstances, you would have to apply again as a new applicant and fulfil the required criteria, as laid out in section 1.

How to renew your licence

You will need to have completed the following to renew your licence.

Renewing your licence after 1 July 2026

If this is your first renewal since 1 July 2026 you must:

• provide a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate that meets all the relevant criteria 
• sign up, or have signed up, to the DBS update service within 30 days of your certificate date 

Our Private hire and hackney carriage licence guide tells you how to do this.

Our Frequently Asked Questions page can also help you understand the changes when making a renewal.   

DVLA licence check code 

You must get a check code to enable us to view your driving licence.

This code is only valid for 21 days.

HMRC Tax check

You must complete a tax check and provide the 9-character check code to us.

The code will expire after 120 days.

Refresher training

You will need to book and undertake refresher training in safeguarding, driving attitudes and behaviours, and local policy requirements. 

The training will take 2 hours, which includes a 30-minute test. 

The test consists of 24 questions. To pass, you must correctly answer at least 18 questions.

Book your refresher training

Your certificate needs to be less than 12 months old when you renew your licence. 

Additional documents required

You will need to provide a:

• DVLA photo-card (both sides), or both sides of the old-style paper licence if you do not have a photo-card
• clear, current passport-style photograph of your head and shoulders
• completed application form

Book an appointment

Once you have all your documents ready and have completed all the pre-application criteria, please email us at licensing@solihull.gov.uk to book an appointment. 

Please provide:

• your full name
• your date of birth
• your mobile number
• the reason for your appointment

 We will not accept walk-ins so you must make an appointment.