Are you meeting your legal responsibilities for your drivers?

The majority of businesses now require their employees and contractors to use their own, or company owned, vehicles in connection with their work. Whether it’s occasional use to attend training using their own car or an employee who drives in connection with work every day, you have a responsibility as an employer to ensure they are safe and not breaching the terms of the motor insurance in place.

 

Please read below Firth & Scott’s advice on this subject.

Driver Licence Checks – Meet your legal responsibilities

 

A driver licence check carried out by you periodically allows you to meet your statutory duty under the Road Traffic Act as the employer.

 

As you may be aware, the paper counterpart of a UK driving licence has been abolished and replaced by the online ‘View Driving Licence’ portal. To access their information, your driver will need their National Insurance number, driving licence number and registered postcode. Once logged in, there is an option to ‘Share Driving Licence’ which will generate a one-time use code which will give access for another person, such as insurance broker or employer, to access to view the driver’s record.

 

To view a shared driving record, the licence holder will need to generate a share code, as described above, along with the last eight characters of their driving licence number. To redeem the share code, visit www.gov.uk/check-driving-licence and follow the on-screen instructions. Please note, the share codes are active for 72 hours, after which the licence holder will need to generate another code if they still wish to share the driving record with you.

 

The record will include the type licence (provisional, full, revoked), penalties or disqualifications if there are any (e.g. SP30, BA10), as well as entitlements – and will give you the option to generate a PDF document containing the licence information.

 

In addition, many Motor Insurance policies contain terms that exclude the use of vehicles by drivers with more than a certain number of penalty points or who carry certain types of driving convictions.

 

We would recommend that you carry out licence checks every six months, by inspecting vehicle user’s licences and completing the attached fleet drivers information form to ensure;

 

  • Your driver has the right type of licence (full, copy, HGV, PSV or provisional) for the work involved.
  • All relevant previous driver offences are identified (e.g. speeding, drink driving, driving with undue care and attention).
  • The declared number of points on the licence is correct.
  • The driver lives at the address indicated.
  • The name of the driver has been correctly identified.

 

Whilst this would also ensure that you are informed of all new offences – even if the driver does not tell you, we would nonetheless make it strict company policy that all vehicle users inform you immediately if;

 

  • They are convicted of any driving offences, whether they receive a fine, endorsement or choose to undertake a speed awareness course.
  • They are involved in any incident or accidents whilst in charge of a motor vehicle at any time away from work, regardless of fault or if it gives rise to an insurance claim.
  • They have any medical conditions notifiable to the DVLA or are unfit to drive

 

For more information regarding the checking of licences, please refer to the Department for Transport https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-transport