A taxi firm has been forced to close its office six hours early every day after its staff faced "vulgar" abuse from customers amid an ongoing driver shortage.

Vokes Taxis has had to shut its Rainham office, in Station Road, at 6pm due to people becoming "angry and threatening" towards its operators.

The firm provides taxis across Medway 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the Rainham office was previously open until midnight every day but now has to be closed six hours earlier "for the protection" of its staff.

Co-owner Mark Robinson said: "I'm afraid that over the last few months our operators received really vulgar abuse on a daily or weekly basis.

"As always with this kind of thing, it is a very small minority of people that let their frustrations get the better of them if they can't get a taxi when they want one, but it is quite upsetting when you're on the receiving end.

"During the pandemic we would often only have one operator in the office at a time, and at night groups would go in to get a taxi home. If there wasn't one available quickly they would get angry and threatening.

"It started with a small gang of lads becoming aggressive to the operator one evening and a trend developed. So a little less than a year ago we decided to start closing the office at 6.00pm for the protection of our staff."

At first, the firm had only closed the office on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, but eventually was forced to do so every day.

Mark said the company is reviewing the situation and would like to be able to reopen soon but "can't do so if it means making the operators vulnerable".

And Mark cites two key reasons for the onslaught of abuse – a shortage in licensed drivers and the roadworks in Medway causing traffic gridlock.

He said: "We need more taxi drivers. Then a lot of the customers' anxiety would go away. We've had to turn away so many calls now because of the driver shortage. This obviously makes the customers feel frustrated because they can't always get a cab when they want it.

"It's become so easy to criticise the company either online or over the phone that it's almost become normal but it seems a small step to this becoming more serious when customers are in the building.

"It's just been verbal so far but we've closed the office because the last thing we want to do is put our employees at risk."

Mark said that a "huge imbalance" in the supply and demand for taxis is an ongoing problem.

While he would expect 70 to 100 taxi drivers across Medway to leave the business every year, they would usually be replaced by a similar number of new drivers. However, he said that this has not been the case since the pandemic and he estimates there are now roughly 200 fewer drivers than there were three years ago.

He said: "A significant number of licensed drivers left the trade over the last few years, and significantly less have become qualified as the council have not been able to carry out the necessary driver evaluations.

"It may also be that fewer drivers are motivated to become qualified because it takes a few weeks to become an Uber driver, but six to 12 months to become licensed in Medway because of the local knowledge that needs to be learned.

"Because the testing wasn't happening over the pandemic, there hasn't been those new drivers coming in for the past two and a half to three years."

While the shortage in taxi drivers is a national problem, the roadworks in Medway are making the issue worse.

He said: "There seems to be roadworks everywhere at the moment, meaning our drivers spend most of their time stuck in traffic jams. People get frustrated when we can't send a taxi out across the Towns because the roads in Medway are gridlocked.

"There are also new apartment blocks being built, so there are more people living in Medway than before. A lot of them are moving here from London, where they are used to relying on taxis, so we have more demand but less drivers to cover that."