Graham has worked for Transport for London (TfL) for over 16 years in a variety of both operational and strategic roles.

In 2003 Graham joined TfL and worked on the implementation of the Congestion Charge scheme, which went live in February 2003. As Contracts and Policy Monitoring Advisor, he was part of a team of staff responsible for ensuring the outsourced service provider delivered a high level of customer service and management of the overall scheme as well as ensuring that all penalty notices were enforced effectively via the legal tribunal system.

In 2010 Graham was appointed to the position of Head of Driver Licensing, London Taxi and Private Hire (TPH), a position which has since evolved into Head of Licensing overseeing all licensing for private hire services and taxis.

As part of this role, Graham has played a key role in modernising the department which had previously relied on outdated, disparate systems and paper based processes. The licensing service is now migrated onto a single system and online functionality is being offered to all licensees. Alongside this Graham has assisted in the delivery of a new outsourced vehicle licensing service, responsible for the annual inspection of all vehicles.

In January 2018 Graham was appointed interim General Manager of TPH. As General Manager, he is responsible for the licensing and regulation of all of London’s circa 23,000 world famous taxi drivers and taxis as well as the licensing of London’s private hire operators, vehicles and drivers. The number of private hire drivers and vehicles has grown substantially in recent years, from around 50,000 drivers and Graham Robinson 2 of 2 8/28/2019 70,000 vehicles in 2009 to over 106,000 drivers and over 90,000 vehicles today. This exponential growth has in itself brought a number of challenges and a key part of the role was to ensure that the Licensing teams coped with this increased demand.

In addition to these operational challenges, as interim General Manager, Graham is overseeing on a number of key activities from a strategic perspective. In order to maintain TfL’s role in ensuring taxi and private hire services recognise the Mayor’s ambitions for a vibrant taxi and private hire market, with space for all providers to flourish, while driving up the standards to improve safety and the quality of service offered to London. This included changes to the private hire regulations to introduce new safety requirements, the introduction of new age limits for taxis to encourage the uptake of new zero emission taxis and the step change in the approach when considering the fitness of private hire operators.

Graham holds a Masters degree in Law from the University of Birmingham which led to his career starting at the Law Society.