Occupational road risk, UK wide
Driver and Fleet Risk Management
The most dangerous thing most of your people do at work happens on a public road, outside your gates and outside your direct supervision. AL23 Safety assesses occupational road risk, builds the policy behind it and tests whether your driver arrangements would survive scrutiny, for employers UK wide.
What is a fleet risk review?
Applying ordinary health and safety law to the part of the job that happens on the road
A fleet risk review treats driving as a work activity subject to the same duties as any other. It looks at the driver, the vehicle, the journey and the management arrangements around all three, then reports where the gaps expose your people, other road users and your directors.
It is not an audit of your vehicles alone. Most of the findings are organisational. Schedules that only work if the driver speeds, a licence check nobody has done since recruitment, a defect reporting route that ends in a glovebox, a policy on phones that senior managers visibly ignore.
Who needs one
Anyone whose staff drive for work, including in their own cars
- Field service, sales, care, housing and inspection teams covering miles between appointments.
- Employers running a grey fleet, where staff use their own vehicles for business travel or take a cash allowance instead of a car.
- Van operators under 3.5 tonnes, who fall outside most transport regulation and inside all of health and safety law.
- Goods and passenger operators holding an O-licence, alongside their transport manager arrangements.
- Organisations that have had a serious collision, a police investigation or an insurer challenging renewal.
- Anyone whose contracts or tender questionnaires now ask for a documented driving at work policy and risk assessment.
The regulations that apply
Your legal framework, in plain terms
There is no driving at work regulation. No statute sets a maximum daily mileage for a car driver, mandates a licence check interval or requires a driver handbook. The duty is built out of general law, which is why enforcement here turns on the quality of your management arrangements. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 section 2 owes a duty to employees who drive, covering the vehicle, the journey, the schedule and the driver's fitness and competence. Section 3 owes the same standard of care to people not in your employment, including other road users, passengers and pedestrians. That section turns work-related road risk from a staff welfare matter into a public safety duty. HSE's current guidance is the web-based "Driving and riding safely for work" suite at hse.gov.uk, covering journey planning, driver safety, worker health, vehicle maintenance and the law. Older leaflet guidance is still widely quoted in the industry. We check what HSE is actually publishing today before citing anything to you.
MHSWR 1999 regulation 3
A suitable and sufficient risk assessment of driving activities, separate from your general office or site assessment.
MHSWR 1999 regulations 5, 10 and 13
Arrangements for planning and monitoring, information for drivers, plus capability and training before someone is put behind the wheel.
HSWA 1974 section 37
Where an offence by the organisation is attributable to the neglect of a director, manager or similar officer, that individual is also guilty.
Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 regulations 104 and 110
Proper control of the vehicle, plus handheld mobile telephones. Regulation 110 was tightened on 25 March 2022 to cover all handheld use including scrolling, photographing and gaming, with six penalty points and a £200 fixed penalty.
Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007
Liability where the way activities are managed or organised causes a death, amounts to a gross breach and a substantial element of that breach lies with senior management.
What we assess
Driver, vehicle, journey and the management around them
- Who drives for work, how far and in what, built from mileage claims and job records rather than the fleet list.
- Grey fleet exposure. HSE is explicit that the law applies to both company and grey fleet vehicles and that cash allowance vehicles are grey fleet too.
- Grey fleet evidence. Licence category, insurance showing business use rather than social domestic and pleasure, MOT where the vehicle is over three years old, plus a documented service and tyre policy.
- Licence checking. Whether you use the DVLA share code route, a bureau under a signed driver mandate such as the D796 or a visual photocard check that cannot reveal endorsements at all.
- Licence check frequency and triggers, including drivers inside the two-year window under the Road Traffic (New Drivers) Act 1995 where six penalty points means revocation.
- Journey planning and fatigue. Schedule realism, start and finish times, night driving and whether the diary permits a break.
- Drivers' hours where they apply, under assimilated Regulation (EC) 561/2006 and the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005. Where those rules do not reach, the general fatigue duty still does.
- Vehicle maintenance regimes, walkaround checks, defect reporting and what happens to a defect after it is reported.
- Load security, racking, tail lifts and the interface with on-site movements covered by our workplace transport safety work.
- Distraction. Handheld and hands-free phone use, in-cab systems, messaging apps, satnav interaction and the expectation set by how quickly managers want a reply.
- Driver competence, induction, on-road assessment and post-incident retraining.
- Telematics and collision data. Whether it is collected, who reads it and whether anything changes as a result.
- Post-incident arrangements, covering reporting, investigation, insurer notification and RIDDOR judgement.
Fatigue and hours, honestly
Assimilated Regulation (EC) 561/2006 applies to goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes and passenger vehicles built to carry more than eight passengers. It sets nine hours daily driving, extendable to ten twice a week, 56 hours weekly, 90 hours fortnightly, a 45-minute break after four and a half hours driving and 11 hours daily rest reducible to nine up to three times between weekly rests. The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005 add a 48-hour average week over a 17-week reference period, a 60-hour cap in any single week and a 10-hour limit where night work is performed, with no individual opt-out.
Most car and light van driving falls outside all of that. The Working Time Regulations 1998 apply instead, with an opt-out available from the 48-hour average. The general duty does not fall away. A sales representative doing 300 miles and eight appointments in a day is a fatigue risk whether or not a tachograph is fitted.
Our process
Profile the driving, then test the arrangements
- 01
Profile
We establish who drives, in what and under what pressure, using mileage data, rotas and expense records.
- 02
Assess
We run the driving at work risk assessment across driver, vehicle, journey and management, then rank the exposures by likelihood and severity.
- 03
Test the arrangements
We sample licence checks, insurance certificates, defect reports and collision records to see whether the system is real.
- 04
Design
We write the driving at work policy, the driver handbook and the grey fleet standard, sized to your operation rather than to a template.
- 05
Embed and review
We brief managers and drivers, set the check intervals and agree review triggers, including a mandatory review after any injury collision.
What you get
Policy, handbook and a grey fleet standard
- A driving at work risk assessment covering company vehicles and grey fleet as separate profiles.
- A driving at work policy stating what is required, what is prohibited and who authorises exceptions.
- A driver handbook written for the cab, covering checks, defects, phones, fatigue and what to do at the roadside.
- A grey fleet standard with the evidence you must hold, the renewal cycle and the point at which a vehicle stops being acceptable for business use.
- A licence checking procedure with routes, frequencies by risk band and escalation for drivers accumulating points.
- A prioritised action plan separating legal gaps from insurer and best practice improvements, with owners and dates.
What we need from you
The records and half a day with drivers
- Your fleet list, mileage records and expense or allowance data showing grey fleet use.
- Existing policies, handbooks and any driver declaration forms.
- Collision, claim and near miss records for the last three years, at-fault and non-fault.
- Licence check records and any telematics reporting you already receive.
- Half a day with two or three drivers. They will describe the schedule as it is, not as it is planned.
Why AL23 Safety
Directors in scope, statistics we can stand behind
Accountable
If your schedules cannot be driven legally, we say so in the report and we say it to the person who sets them.
Honest about the evidence
Fleet safety marketing is full of statistics with no traceable source. We quote what we can stand behind and leave the rest out.
Directors in scope
We are explicit about section 37 and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 because road deaths are where those provisions most often bite.
UK wide
We support fleets and grey fleets across the UK, from field service teams to distribution operations. Our logistics sector work and our lone worker risk assessments join up with this.
Not sure how exposed your grey fleet is
Most organisations underestimate it by a wide margin
Tell us how many people claim business mileage in their own cars and what evidence you hold for them. That answer alone usually shows where to start.
Common questions
Answers, up front
Cannot see your question? Get in touch and we will answer it directly.
Contact usYes. HSE states plainly that the law applies to both company and grey fleet vehicles and that vehicles used under cash allowance schemes are grey fleet too. The duty under sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 attaches to the work activity, not to the vehicle's ownership. Commuting is generally outside health and safety law. Travel between appointments is not.
There is no legal interval. Risk-based practice is annually for low mileage and low risk drivers, every six months for higher mileage or safety-critical roles and quarterly for anyone carrying six or more points or with a recent at-fault collision. Check at recruitment and immediately on notification of a new endorsement. Put drivers under a contractual duty to self-declare endorsements, disqualifications and notifiable medical conditions straight away.
The paper counterpart was abolished on 8 June 2015. A photocard alone now shows nothing about endorsements. The driver generates a check code at gov.uk/view-driving-licence and gives you the code plus the last eight characters of their licence number. You enter both at gov.uk/check-driving-information to see categories, endorsements, points and disqualifications. The code has a limited life and is intended for a single use. Confirm the current validity period at gov.uk when you write the procedure. For volume checking, DVLA's Access to Driver Data service or a bureau using a signed mandate is more workable.
Usually not. Under regulation 10 of the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, most road traffic accidents on a public road are outside RIDDOR. The exceptions include exposure to a substance being conveyed by the vehicle, loading and unloading, work alongside the road such as construction or maintenance, plus accidents involving a train. We check the current wording of regulation 10 against the facts before advising. An incident outside RIDDOR can still be investigated by the police and can still found a prosecution under the 1974 Act.
It can. The police lead investigations on public roads. HSE becomes involved where serious management failures contributed significantly or where vehicle machinery was faulty. Where the way the organisation managed its activities caused the death and amounted to a gross breach, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 is available. The penalty is an unlimited fine, plus the possibility of a publicity order and a remedial order.
Cost is driven by the number of drivers, the number of vehicle types, whether an O-licence operation is in scope and how much documentation exists. A grey fleet review for a 30-person field team is small. A mixed operation with HGVs, vans and 200 grey fleet drivers is not. Most reviews complete within three to four weeks of receiving the records. Call us with the numbers and we will scope against them rather than quote blind.
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