Capital Call service review

Our proposals

Overview

We’re proposing to close the Capital Call assisted transport service. This is because of improvements to the Taxicard scheme and increased availability of cabs and taxi services across all of London.

By closing Capital Call, we can redirect this funding into other assisted transport services including Dial-a-Ride. We can also use the funding we’d save to promote these services to a greater extent, to ensure more people are aware of them and can use them.

The proposals

We’re really pleased that the availability of taxis has improved so much in the 10 boroughs where Capital Call operates.

We want the people who live in these 10 boroughs, and everyone else across London to be able to travel freely and easily. We also need to make sure that we use our resources to the benefit of everyone. Given that so many additional taxis now operate in the 10 boroughs where Capital Call operates, there just isn’t the same case now to operate the service as there was in 2003. We believe that closing the service would:

• Not unfairly disadvantage any of the existing Capital Call users, although we are using this consultation to help us better understand how the proposed closure would affect people who currently use it
• Allow us to use the resources we put into Capital Call to better use, for example to promote services like Taxicard and Dial-a-Ride to an even greater extent, so that more people across London can use them

For these reasons we are proposing to close the Capital Call service by 31 March 2026.

We plan to provide members with more details of how they can utilise our existing services - Taxicard and Dial-a-Ride. We will also provide workshops and phone line support to overcome any concerns and issues they may be experiencing following the transition from Capital Call.

Background

Capital Call is a service that helps its members to travel in London using minicabs (also known as Private Hire Vehicles).

Capital Call was created in 2003 to supplement the existing Taxicard scheme. Originally, the Taxicard scheme only used Taxis, today it helps its members to travel in London using black Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles.

Capital Call was originally run by Hackney Community Transport but has been managed by TfL since July 2018. Both the Capital Call and Taxicard schemes operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Capital Call was created because in 2003, in 10 specific boroughs, where there were not enough Taxis operating to enable everyone who needed to travel to do so. Capital Call was introduced to enable Taxicard members, who would have ordinarily used taxis to travel, to use Private Hire Vehicles to travel instead.

Following a consultation in 2014, Capital Call has been closed to new memberships since 2015.

However, in recent years the availability of taxis in the 10 affected boroughs has improved greatly. This has meant that:

• Last year Taxicard successfully booked over 90% of trips in the 10 boroughs that Capital Call operates in
• Equally, Dial-a-Ride has consistently booked over 90% of trips
• Between 2019/20 and 2024/25 the number of trips on Capital Call have dropped by 58%

More Information

We have provided more information to help you respond:

Community Conversations sessions

We will have sessions of community conversations open for booking where people can discuss our proposals in more detail. These will be 1:1 sessions held with the project team on Microsoft Teams, Zoom or by phone as needed.

Please email us at haveyoursay@tfl.gov.uk to request an appointment at a time suitable for you and we will get back to you to confirm this.

Drop-in events  

As part of our consultation, we are hosting in-person drop in events for people who have questions about the closure of Capital Call.

We will be available to answer questions in person on the Ground Floor, Palestra, 197 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8NJ on:

• Saturday 12 July 2025 (11:00-15:00)
• Tuesday 22 July 2025 (16:00-20:00)

This will give you an opportunity to see further information about the proposals and provide your thoughts and feedback, to allow us to consider your views.

We will have paper copies of the survey and consultation materials available and the team will be on hand to answer any questions you may have.

Accessible Information

We want to make sure everyone is able to take part in our consultations. To help make it accessible to everyone we have provided:

Tell us your views

You can reply by completing our survey, which should take no more than 10 minutes to complete or if you are short on time, you can submit a quick response.

The closing date for comments is 6 August 2025.

Questions?

We are offering community conversations and running drop-in sessions if you’d like to talk to us in person. Further details on these can be found in the More Information button. Or you can use our question tool during the consultation period. We will respond your questions as soon as we can.

You can also contact us by email haveyoursay@tfl.gov.uk, via our telephone call back service (020 3054 6037) or in writing FREEPOST TFL HAVE YOUR SAY (Capital Call).

Next steps

These proposals are subject to the outcome of our consultation. Once consultation ends on 6 August 2025, we will spend time considering all the responses we receive and will prepare a consultation report.

The consultation report will help us reach a decision about our proposals to close the Capital Call service.

The report will be available to everyone that takes part in the consultation and a copy will be published on our website.