Airport work, private journeys and corporate accounts, without the app

Chauffeur jobs in London: what the work involves and how to qualify

Most guides to chauffeur jobs in London are written by people who have never done one. This is what the job actually looks like from the driver's seat, what Transport for London requires before you can take it, what it costs to get there, and how working for a private hire operator differs from working through an app. If you already hold your badge, skip to the section on operators and insurance.

What a chauffeur job in London actually is

A chauffeur job is pre booked private hire work at the upper end of the market. The passenger has booked in advance, the price was agreed before anyone got in the car, and the driver is expected to be presentable, punctual and discreet. Nobody flags you down and nobody negotiates at the kerb.

The daily reality in London breaks into three kinds of work. Airport and cruise port transfers make up the volume: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City, plus Southampton and Dover for cruise passengers. Private day journeys take the same passengers out to Stonehenge, Windsor, Bath, Oxford or the Cotswolds and back, usually eight to ten hours with the same group. Corporate and multi day hire puts one driver and one vehicle at a client's disposal, sometimes for a week.

The commercial difference from app work is the second leg. A pre booked airport run is priced knowing there is a return journey to make, and the fare reflects it. An app job prices the outward leg and leaves the driver to solve the empty return himself. Over a month, that is where the gap between the two models shows up.

How to become a licensed private hire driver in London

Every driver carrying passengers for hire in London must hold a private hire driver licence issued by Transport for London, still universally called a PCO licence after the old Public Carriage Office. There is no legal route around it, and an operator who offers you work without one is offering you something that will cost you your insurance and possibly your car.

The core requirements, current at the time of writing:

• Age and driving experience. You must be at least twenty one, and you must have held a full driving licence from the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein for at least three years.
• Right to work in the United Kingdom. Checked at application and again by any operator before your first job.
• Enhanced criminal record check. Applied for through TfL rather than independently. Since February 2024 you must also register with and maintain a subscription to the DBS Update Service, and it must stay active for your licence to be granted and kept.
• Medical examination to DVLA Group 2 standard, carried out by a doctor with access to your records. This is the same standard applied to lorry and bus drivers, and it is stricter than an ordinary driving licence medical.
• English language requirement. Since October 2021 new applicants must pass a speaking and listening assessment, with reading and writing assessed through SERU.
• SERU assessment. The Safety, Equality and Regulatory Understanding test, compulsory since 1 October 2021. It is a written assessment taken at a TfL assessment centre, drawn entirely from the Private Hire Driver's Handbook, and it covers passenger safety, safeguarding, equality law and your obligations as a licensed driver. Once passed it does not usually need retaking, provided there is no significant gap in your licensing.
• HMRC tax check. If you hold or have recently held a private hire driver licence with any authority, you must complete a tax check and give TfL the code. The code expires after one hundred and twenty days, so generate it when you are ready to submit rather than in advance.

Taxi, private hire and chauffeur: three different things

The words get used interchangeably and they should not be. A taxi, meaning a black cab in London, can be hailed in the street or picked up at a rank, uses a meter, and requires the Knowledge. A private hire vehicle must be booked in advance through a licensed operator, cannot be hailed, and cannot use a meter in the same way. A chauffeur service is a category of private hire work, not a separate licence: same badge, same vehicle licensing, higher expectations of the car, the driver and the service.

This matters when you are choosing work. Every chauffeur job in London is a private hire job, but not every private hire job is chauffeur work, and the difference shows up in the fare, the passenger and the hours.

Your vehicle, and the insurance nobody should get wrong

If you intend to drive your own car, it must hold its own private hire vehicle licence, separate from your driver licence, and it must be insured for hire and reward. Ordinary social, domestic and pleasure cover, and even standard business cover, does not extend to carrying paying passengers. Driving a passenger on the wrong policy leaves you uninsured, which means an accident becomes a personal financial event and a licensing one.

Premium operators add their own requirements on top of the licensing minimum. Ours is that vehicles are no older than seven years, because that is what we commit to passengers in our terms. Executive work generally means a Mercedes E Class, a V Class or an equivalent, and the higher rated jobs go to the newer and better presented cars. Since 1 July 2025, drivers licensed on or after that date must also display the current TfL private hire signage unless the vehicle holds an exemption.

If you do not have a suitable vehicle, that is not the end of the conversation. Chauffeur only work exists, where the vehicle belongs to the client or the operator and you supply the licence and the driving.

Working for an operator instead of an app

An app allocates the nearest available car to the nearest available job. An operator allocates a specific driver to a specific passenger, usually with a name, a flight number and a destination known hours or days in advance. Both are legitimate ways to earn a living, and plenty of drivers do both, but the day feels different.

With operator work you know what you are doing tomorrow. You are not circling for a ping. Airport arrivals are tracked centrally, so you are told when the aircraft actually landed rather than guessing at the arrivals board. Waiting time is charged to the passenger rather than absorbed by you. And because the passenger paid the operator in advance, you never have an awkward conversation about money at the kerb.

The trade off is that you are offered work rather than choosing it from a queue, and reliability matters more. An operator who has promised a named passenger a specific pick up cannot absorb a driver who does not turn up, and the drivers who take the unpopular early runs get offered everything else as well.

Choosing an operator, and the warning signs

London has hundreds of private hire operators and they are not equally worth your time. The following are worth checking before you commit an evening to anybody's onboarding process.

• Are they licensed, and can you verify it? Every operator has a TfL licence number. Ask for it and check it yourself on the TfL licence checker. Ours is 010942.
• Do they charge you to join? A joining fee, a registration fee, an admin fee or a compulsory equipment purchase are all warning signs. Nobody who genuinely needs drivers charges drivers for the privilege.
• Where does the money land? Payment should go to a bank account in your own name or your own company's name. An operator willing to pay your earnings to a third party is an operator with a problem, and it is one of the recognised indicators of labour exploitation in this trade.
• Do you see the fare before you accept? If the answer is no, you are being asked to work without knowing what you earn.
• Is exclusivity demanded? A self employed driver who cannot work with anybody else is not being treated as self employed.
• Who holds your documents? Copies are normal and necessary. Handing over originals is not.

Airport work, and why Heathrow is different

Airport transfers are the backbone of chauffeur work in London and Heathrow is the biggest single source of it. The work has its own rhythm: long haul arrivals from North America land in the early morning, flights from Asia and the Gulf land through the night, and departures cluster in the pre dawn hours. Drivers who will take those slots are permanently in demand.

It also has its own skills. Knowing which car park serves which terminal, where the meeting points are, how long immigration realistically takes at seven in the morning, and how to find a family of five with eleven suitcases in a crowded arrivals hall. None of that is on the SERU syllabus and all of it decides whether a job runs smoothly.

Positioning matters more than drivers expect. Operators based on the airport perimeter can put a car at a terminal in minutes, and drivers who live to the west of London or south towards Gatwick will be offered more work simply because the geography favours them. If you are further out, say so, and say which airports you are willing to position to.

A second language is worth more than most drivers realise

London's inbound visitors are overwhelmingly from the United States, Canada, Australia, Latin America and the Gulf. An operator serving that market dispatches in several languages, and a driver who speaks Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic or Italian gets requested by name and repeat booked by families who found the first journey easy. If you speak a second language even conversationally, put it on your application. It is one of the few things that will get you offered better work in your first month rather than your sixth.

Tax, status and the paperwork side

Most chauffeur partners work as sole traders or through their own limited company. That means registering with HMRC, filing a self assessment return each year, and keeping records of your income and your allowable costs, which for a driver typically includes fuel, insurance, licensing, servicing, cleaning and the vehicle itself. The HMRC tax check now sits inside the licensing process, so the two are formally linked and staying on top of one keeps the other straightforward.

Nothing here is tax advice, and an hour with an accountant who works with private hire drivers usually pays for itself in the first year. What is worth saying plainly is that self employment is the normal arrangement in this trade, and an operator who describes you as self employed while controlling your hours, your rates and your right to work elsewhere is describing something other than what is happening.

Applying to drive with Chauffeurz

We are a private hire operator licensed by Transport for London under operator licence 010942, based on the northern perimeter of Heathrow, working with a network of licensed chauffeur partners across London and the United Kingdom. Our passengers are international visitors, corporate accounts and travel trade clients, which means pre booked work with a named passenger, a fixed price and a tracked flight.

We charge no joining fee of any kind, we pay into an account in your own name, we tell you the fare before you accept the job, and we do not ask for exclusivity. Those commitments are published in our Modern Slavery Statement and our Terms and Conditions, which means they are documents we can be held to rather than promises on a recruitment page.

If you hold a current private hire driver licence, or you are partway through the application and want to line something up for when it arrives, use the registration form above. We check every application against the licensing register and come back within two working days.

Licensing requirements and fees are set by Transport for London and change from time to time. This page reflects the position as at August 2026 and is provided as general information for drivers, not as legal, licensing or tax advice. Always confirm current requirements on the Transport for London website before applying.