Running a compliant fleet is essential for your business. It ensures your vehicles are roadworthy, safe and capable of doing the job you need. Crucially, it also means complying with the law on everything from Low Emission Zones to the new Direct Vision Standard for HGVs. Get it right, and you’ll prevent unscheduled downtime and achieve your cost-saving objectives.
To ensure standards can be met across your business, here’s how to achieve and maintain fleet compliance in 2021.
Managing Compliance
Vehicle Maintenance
Establishing a detailed fleet maintenance plan is the first step to compliance. As a baseline, you will need to plan preventative maintenance and gather a complete data set across the fleet. A well-maintained vehicle is less likely to fail, endangering other road users and disrupting your operations.
This is essential for predicting and regulating costs and ensuring parts and fuel purchasing practices are correctly undertaken. But you will also need to ensure that every fleet vehicle has a current MOT and that you have a robust system for managing warranty policies.
Risk Assessments
Complying with health and safety guidelines is critical to reduce fines and prevent accidents, especially in light of harsher sentencing guidelines for corporate manslaughter.
Effective risk management practices ensure the safety of employees and other road users. They also reduce legal fees and insurance costs. You’ll need to follow company best practice and guidelines as well as government health and safety guidance and the working/driving time directive. Other things to think about including the operations your drivers undertake and the routes they follow.
Drivers and Operations
To achieve driver compliance, you need to focus on these three critical areas:
- Licences: Does every driver have one, and is it valid, up to date and correct for the vehicle they operate? There are plenty of myths about UK Driving Licence Checks. Still, the truth is running a driving licence check online is your responsibility if you want to achieve fleet compliance.
- Training: From a health and safety perspective, your drivers must be fully trained for the type of vehicle they’re operating. They should also know how to drive safely on the open road.
- Tax, insurance and MOT: Your business is responsible for ensuring that every vehicle in your fleet is fully taxed, insured and has an MOT. That includes cars and vans in your grey fleet owned and operated by drivers but used for company business.
Ultimately, if you employ drivers in your business, you have a duty of care. Ensuring this provides the confidence that you have achieved compliance across your operational practices and driver programmes.
Maintaining Compliance
In today’s world, keeping on top of fleet compliance requires a detailed plan. Back it up with policies and procedures on vehicle maintenance, safety management and risk assessments, and driver training and employee vehicle document checks, and you’re on your way to handling the essential compliance factors.
Fleet compliance is an ongoing process, relying on organisation and visibility across the organisation. Consistency in your compliance solutions will help your business avoid safety violations, fines and legal costs and excess disruption.
In conclusion
Compliance doesn’t necessarily have to be complicated, but it does need to be comprehensive. There’s no one-size solution, but if you carry it out correctly, you can manage risk, make operational improvements and embed compliance at the heart of your company culture.
At DriverCheck, we offer an online driving licence check and grey fleet management to ensure that your drivers and vehicles are fully compliant. Contact us today to determine how our independent driving licence verification can help your fleet achieve compliance with ease.