Two licensing officers with South Ribble Borough Council who allegedly issued licences without checks have been suspended in light of an interim report.

The review into the licensing of hackney carriages and private hire vehicles by the council described the local authorities failure to vet 44 of its drivers as ‘severe’.

A spokesperson for South Ribble said: ‘We take matters of public safety extremely seriously and would like to reassure the public that we have acted quickly and urgently to investigate these serious issues.

‘A fully independent review was commissioned by the council and since receiving its interim report, we have conducted a full review of all taxi licences, including checks on all drivers. Those are all now complete and no further issues have been raised.’

The council also added that it has accepted all of the report’s recommendations and has implemented the majority of them. The rest, it said, will be complete as soon as possible.

The full report will be published once the investigation has concluded.