Uber is hiring
(Picture: PA Archive)Uber is looking to sign up thousands more drivers in the capital after Transport for London ended five years of uncertainty by awarding the company a 30-month licence.
The ride hailing app has about 45,000 drivers in London — only slightly higher than before Covid — but wants to recruit up to 20,000 more across the UK within the next year to meet surging demand.
Uber’s boss in northern and eastern Europe, Jamie Heywood, said demand for trips was up by more than 10 per cent in London compared with pre-pandemic levels — and by far more at the weekends.
He said: “For us our challenge is, as it has been since the pandemic eased, to continue to get more drivers onto the platform... we have fewer drivers than we need to meet the demand we’re seeing so we are trying to recruit drivers in as many ways as possible.”
Uber put its prices up by 10 per cent last November but Mr Heywood said there were no immediate plans to increase them again despite soaring fuel costs.
He added: “We’re comfortable with our pricing... But obviously if things change, if costs change, if demand changes, we’ll go back in and take another look at it.”
TfL awarded a two-and-a-half-year licence on Saturday after twice revoking its right to operate in the capital — in 2017 and 2019 — over safety concerns. Courts granted Uber temporary extensions to its licence during a lengthy legal battle.
The company today also confirmed it is extending its Uber Green service, previously available only in Zone 1, to the whole of Greater London. It gives customers the option to hail an electric car at the same price as its basic Uber X service.
