PHV drivers waiting at Gatwick Airport’s South Terminal authorised vehicle area are using welfare facilities with broken toilet seats, overflowing bins, wet floors, and no adequate provision for female drivers. LDV documented the conditions on 14 May 2026 and has filed a report with the Health and Safety Executive. Reference: CAT-0360300.
What Drivers Find When They Arrive
Turn left off the South Terminal approach road toward the long-stay car park, continue down the road, and you reach Gatwick’s Authorised Vehicle Area — the holding area where licensed private hire vehicle drivers park between jobs. For many drivers, that wait stretches to several hours. What they find when they get there raises serious questions about whether Gatwick Airport is meeting its legal obligations to the workers who keep its terminals moving.
LDV visited the South Terminal PHV welfare facilities on 14 May 2026 and photographed what was there. The evidence was submitted to the Health and Safety Executive on 10 June 2026.
|
2
Cubicles with broken
or missing toilet seats |
1992
Workplace Regulations
legal standard |
HSE
Report filed
10 June 2026 |
What LDV Found
On 14 May 2026, LDV documented the following conditions at the South Terminal PHV welfare facilities:
- Toilet seat completely detached and lying on the floor — a direct injury risk
- Second cubicle: toilet seat missing entirely
- Bins overflowing with waste spilling onto the floor
- Wet, littered floor including discarded plastic bottles
- Toilet paper dispenser present but empty — no toilet paper available
- No adequate toilet provision observed for female drivers
Photographic evidence was submitted to the Health and Safety Executive alongside this report. HSE reference: CAT-0360300, submitted 10 June 2026.
The Legal Standard
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require that sanitary conveniences are kept clean, in good repair, and adequately ventilated and lit. Regulation 20 requires sufficient toilet provision. Regulation 21 requires suitable washing facilities. Where workers of both sexes are present, separate provision is required unless individual rooms are lockable.
PHV drivers working Gatwick’s South Terminal are present on airport premises for extended periods as a direct result of their licensed operating requirements. They are not transient visitors. They are workers performing a transport function that the airport depends on — and they are entitled to the same basic welfare standards as any other worker on the premises.
The Equality Dimension
London’s PHV workforce is not exclusively male. The absence of adequate toilet provision for female drivers is not a minor administrative gap — it is a barrier to equal participation in airport work and raises potential concerns under the Equality Act 2010.
Ali Haydor, GMB National Chair of the Uber Committee and Branch Secretary for the Southern Region, responded to LDV’s enquiry. Haydor described the welfare conditions at airport PHV holding areas as a longstanding concern for GMB members, noting that drivers spending hours at airports between jobs deserve the same basic facilities as any other worker on the premises.
The Broader Pattern
Gatwick is not an isolated case. LDV’s previous investigation — The Airport Trap — documented how PHV drivers across London’s major airports face long, unpaid waiting periods with inadequate or non-existent welfare provision. Drivers pay drop-off and pick-up fees to access airport work. What they receive in return, at Gatwick’s South Terminal, is a broken toilet seat on the floor.
The pattern points to a structural assumption embedded in how airports are designed and operated: that PHV drivers are a logistics resource to be managed, not workers with legal rights to basic welfare provision.
Gatwick’s Response
Gatwick Airport was contacted for comment on 28 May 2026 regarding PHV driver welfare facilities at the South Terminal. A spokesperson responded on a background basis. LDV subsequently identified an error in our original enquiry — we had referenced the North Terminal rather than the South Terminal — and wrote to Gatwick on 10 June 2026 to correct the record. Gatwick confirmed their response remained applicable to the South Terminal.
What Needs to Change
Airport operators who require PHV drivers to use designated holding areas for extended periods have a legal and moral obligation to provide adequate welfare facilities. That means:
- Toilet facilities maintained in clean, working condition at all times
- Separate, accessible provision for female drivers
- Regular inspection and maintenance schedule — published and verifiable
None of this is radical. All of it is already required by law. The question is whether Gatwick Airport, TfL, and the HSE are willing to enforce it.