Posted: Friday, 10 June 2016
Employers have a Duty of Care under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) (2) to ensure as far as is reasonably practical the health, safety and wellbeing of employees at work and anybody who allows someone to drive for work purposes must ensure that they are legally entitled to do so. As a result, licence checking is an invaluable service for all fleet operators.
To get the most from licence checking, we recommend adopting a health and safety approach to it. Here's some guidelines we recommend you follow when licence checking:
We recommend adopting a structured plan for licence checking. Your fleet drivers should be made aware of the laws governing road safety and your company's and their own obligations under the Road Traffic Acts and the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations. Drivers should be made fully aware of your intention to perform licence checking, something which we recommend is carried out every month or every two months.
To check your driver's licences, you need to collect your driver's driving licence numbers and review these regularly to make sure that no dishonesty can affect your checks. For example, some fleet drivers have been known to present a duplicate licence to their employer for checks – a licence which is clean of any endorsements, when in actual fact the driver's latest licence shows several offences. You will also need to collect your driver's National Insurance Numbers and the postcodes on their driving licences to use our licence checking service.
Licence checking with us is an easy process. Our licence checking services uses the DVLA Electronic Driver Entitlement Checking Service (EDECS). All our licence checks are carried out against the DVLA database and they provide information on licence validity dates, categories of vehicle that the driver can drive, and if there are any current offences and much more. Licence checking will reveal any and all offences, allowing you as an employer or fleet operator to review your drivers and ensure that they are being honest with you.
Depending on the information that licence checking brings up, you may have to act to meet your obligations under the Road Traffic Acts and the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations as an employer or fleet operator. For example, if an employee has recently been disqualified from driving a certain category of vehicle and you did not know this, then this is sufficient grounds for punishing or dismissing an employee.
Adopting a health and safety approach to licence checking is a fantastic way to ensure that you meet your legal obligations as a fleet operator. To find out more about licence checking and how our service works, check out our FAQ page here.