CHAS Driving for Work Guides in association with
Whether you have a trade, a supervisory or management role, or deliver materials, driving for work is one of the most important parts of the job yet many of us don’t give it a second thought. It is well-established in health and safety law that a vehicle driven for work is classed as an extension of the workplace so employers have a legal responsibility to make sure vehicles and drivers are safe. If you’re the designated health and safety professional in the business then this is even more important.
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders there are now almost 5 million vans on Britain’s road and many of these are used to carry people, tools or materials to site. Government statistics show that over 35,000 people are injured each year in collisions that involve someone driving for work. The vast majority of these injuries are not the person driving – they are usually other vulnerable road users such as cyclists or pedestrians, and further studies show that vans are ten times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision than cars, and more than twice as likely to be involved as a heavy goods vehicle.
Health and Safety at Work Legislation
The same legislation that requires you to provide correct PPE and training for your employees, including sub-contractors, and to ensure any tools are safely maintained, also requires you to manage any driving activities. Current Health and Safety at Work legislation requires you to:
- Risk assess any business activities that involve driving
- Create policies and procedures for carrying out those activities safely
- Carry out those activities without putting your employee (the driver) at risk
- Carry out those activities without putting other road users at risk
- Monitor those activities to ensure they are always carried out safely
- Keep adequate records of everything that has been done
In the event of a serious crash you may need to prove that you did all these things and took all reasonable precautions to minimise the risks.
Are you a health and safety manager?
We all know that ignorance of the law is no defence if you break the law. Many safety professionals believe they don’t have any responsibility for drivers and vehicles. You may think that the Fleet Manager is responsible for vehicle safety, and HR is responsible for driver checks, and that you are responsible for ensuring nobody gets hurt on site. Elements of this may be true, however, it has been firmly established over many decades that any vehicle used for work is considered in law to be an extension of the workplace. It’s why nobody is allowed to smoke in a vehicle being used for work – the same health and safety rules apply as they do in the offi ce. A Fleet Manager, HR Manager, or any other person might be able to reasonably claim that they weren’t aware of these requirements. It wouldn’t help their case but they may well not be aware. That excuse doesn’t apply to a health and safety professional. Driving for work comes under health and safety at work legislation and you are your employer’s resident expert so, while vehicle checks and driver checks might be delegated to other departments, the overall responsibility for making sure those departments are aware of the need for them, and that they are conducted and managed correctly, would very likely be seen as your overall responsibility, and it is therefore very likely that, following a serious incident, it is you that any investigating authorities would want to talk to first. With that in mind, it is important that you own the responsibility and ensure others in the business are aware of the importance of managing driver and vehicle safety correctly.
Driver checks
All your drivers need to be correctly licensed to drive the vehicle they’re using and they also need to be medically fit to do so. A driving licence check will provide this information. Guidance from the government and the Health and Safety Executive says you should check driving licences on joining and periodically thereafter. The CHAS Vehicle Compliance Standard requires that driver licences are checked at least once every six months. Automated, online licence-checking services are cheap and make the process of checking and record-keeping quick and painless. Driver licence checks can be done direct with DVLA through our partners at FleetCheck. You should also check that your drivers are competent to do what you’re asking them to do and provide training where necessary – such as for towing trailers or plant behind a van.
Vehicle safety
All vehicles need to be roadworthy at all times and simply having an MOT is not enough. Around a third of vans and other light commercial vehicles fail their MOT at the fi rst attempt so your vehicles should be checked every day before use. Safety-critical faults such as worn tyres or broken lights need to be fixed immediately. Other less serious faults need to be fixed at the earliest opportunity. You will need to keep records to prove that these checks have been done
Driving safety standards
You can only expect safe driving when the rules are clearly laid out through a Driving for Work policy – a legally required document that must be owned by a company director. The policy lays out all the rules on company driving including the driver and vehicle checks outlined above, as well as guidance on:
- Fitness-to-drive topics such as fatigue and drug/alcohol impairment.
- Driver distraction including use of mobile phones.
- Management of driver fatigue
- Driving to the Highway Code – including understanding that vans are often subject to lower speed limits than cars.
Once you’ve created a policy, it needs to be effectively communicated to all your drivers and reviewed annually to ensure it has kept pace with any updates to legislation or the Highway Code.
Record keeping
One of the most important elements of managing drivers and vehicles is record keeping. In the event of a serious incident, you could be asked by the investigating authorities – the police, the DVSA or the Health and Safety Executive – to prove that you had met all these requirements. Spreadsheets are fi ne up to a point but can easily by corrupted, lost and lead to errors when data is entered incorrectly. CHAS recommends using FleetCheck’s online Fleet Management Software and driver licence checking service. You can fi nd out more details below. This is a very high level summary of your legal requirements when managing drivers and vehicles. For a full list of actions you need to take in line with good practice, please refer to the CHAS Vehicle Compliance Scheme.
Other driving for work information guides
Guide 2
Why safer vans makes financial sense
Failing to manage your drivers and vehicles properly can lead to huge increases in
unnecessary operating costs and business disruption. It can also put future work at risk.
Guide 3
Creating your ‘driving for work’ policy
Setting the rules and communicating them eff ectively to your drivers is a legal
requirement. Here’s how to create your Driving for Work policy.
Helping you meet the CHAS Vehicle Compliance Standard
We’ve created a free guide which explains your legal responsibilities, how to remove some of the most common pains of managing vehicles, and how FleetCheck will help you meet all the requirements set out in the CHAS Vehicle Compliance Standard.
