Who can apply
You can apply to TfL from the age of 18, but you cannot be licensed until you are 21. There is no upper age limit, and no retirement age: drivers stay licensed for as long as they keep passing their medicals.
- A full car driving licence from Great Britain (category B), Northern Ireland or the EU and EEA. Unlike private hire, a taxi applicant does not need to have held it for any minimum time.
- The right to live and work in the UK. If your permission is time-limited, your licence will be too.
- Good character. TfL asks for an enhanced DBS check through its own provider, and weighs convictions, cautions and penalty points against the rules in its driver policy. With 12 or more points on your licence, TfL will not license you.
- Fitness to drive to the DVLA Group 2 standard, the one lorry and bus drivers meet, usually shown by a medical with your GP.
- English at about level B1. Taxi applicants take no separate language test: the oral exams show your speaking and listening, and the SERU assessment your reading and writing.
If you have lived abroad for three months or more at a time in the last ten years, you will also need a certificate of good conduct from each of those countries.
Apply first, then learn
You apply to TfL before you start learning, not after. Applications are made through an online account and dealt with in the order they arrive; TfL offers no fast track and warns that anyone selling one is a fraud.
Once your character and medical checks are done, TfL sends you the introductory pack: the Blue Book of runs and a booklet of advice. You then attend a talk with a Knowledge examiner, and you cannot progress until you have.
What you learn
The Knowledge covers every street and every place of note within six miles of Charing Cross. It is built on the 320 runs of the Blue Book. Each run joins two points, and you learn the shortest legal route between them, both ways, and every point within a quarter of a mile of each end.
Most candidates learn on a moped or a bike, following each run on the road, with a map of at least three inches to the mile and a partner to call over runs with. TfL is clear that maps and apps are aids: there is no substitute for having been there.
The stages
After the first 80 runs you take a self-assessment. With all 320 learned you sit a written exam. Then come the appearances: one-to-one oral exams, roughly every 56 days at Stage 3, every 28 at Stage 4 and every 21 at Stage 5, until you have the marks to move up. A final exam and the licence application follow. Our guide to the stages takes each one in turn.
Getting your licence
Near the end you pass the SERU assessment on safety, equality and the rules of the trade, take a further enhanced DBS check and join the DBS Update Service. A Knowledge examiner then gives you your badge and licence at a pre-licensing talk. A taxi driver's licence lasts three years and is renewed without taking the Knowledge again.
All licensed taxi drivers must pass a taxi driving test, but there has been no provider for it since the end of 2016. In the meantime, TfL licenses drivers who finish the Knowledge on condition that they pass the driving assessment once one is available.
How long it takes
TfL says the Knowledge typically takes three to four years. Its own figures are longer: candidates who qualified in 2024 had taken 53 months on average. Our guide to time and cost has the figures for every year since 2015, and every fee.
Questions about this
- How old do you have to be to be a London taxi driver?
- What driving licence do I need to do the Knowledge?
- Can I do the Knowledge with points on my licence?
- Can I be a London taxi driver with a criminal record?
- Can I be a taxi driver with a drink-driving conviction?
- Do you have to be British to be a London taxi driver?
- Do London taxi drivers need an English test?
- Can you do the Knowledge with dyslexia or a disability?
- Can I be a taxi driver if I have lived abroad?
- How do I apply to do the Knowledge?
- What documents do I need to apply for a taxi licence?
- Can I fast-track my taxi licence application?
- What happens if my taxi licence application is refused?
- Do unpaid fines affect a taxi licence application?
- Do you need a medical to be a London taxi driver?
- What eyesight do you need to be a taxi driver?
- How often do taxi drivers need a medical?
- Can I be a taxi driver with a mental health condition?
- What DBS check do London taxi drivers need?
- What happens after you pass the Knowledge?
- Do London taxi drivers take a driving test?
- How long does a taxi driver licence last?
- What is the SERU assessment?
- What must taxi drivers report to TfL?