Overseeing a fleet of vehicles involves significant safety responsibilities, and none are more important than ensuring drivers are eligible and lawfully able to drive.
While annual licence checks are an industry standard, more frequent checks are prudent for drivers with accumulated points and will almost certainly help you identify at-risk drivers.
How Can I Check Drivers’ Licences Online?
You can verify a driver’s licence via the government website, but this is a time-consuming process as you need the driver’s licence number and a ‘check code’ from them.
This method suits occasional checks but is just not practical for monitoring larger fleets.
This is why we developed a tool called FleetCheck LicenceAssured. Using FleetCheck LicenceAssured you can check any number of employees’ current licence status quickly and efficiently.
All of your drivers’ data will be easily accessible from your online portal, and you will receive automatic alerts if there has been a change to a licence status.
Instead of relying on your drivers to give you a check code, all you need is a driver’s consent and you can check their licence as often as you like.
Data Protection Compliance
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed with the Association of Fleet Professionals, the body responsible for fleet decision-makers, that no offence under the Data Protection Act is committed when employers check employees’ driving licence records with the DVLA.
FleetCheck LicenceAssured is also fully compliant and up-to-date with the latest data protection and GDPR laws.
As a fleet manager or business owner, you can lawfully request to see an employee’s driving licence.
Or you can give your employees a mandate to sign giving you permission to check their records via FleetCheck LicenceAssured.
The Importance of Licence Checks
We cannot stress the importance of routine licence checks. It’s vital for compliance in organisations of all sizes and will help you identify at-risk drivers or even drivers who are not lawfully able to be on the road.
Using fleet management software like FleetCheck LicenceAssured and FleetCheck is essential to set up robust compliance.
Not only can you check your drivers’ licences as often as you want, but you can also set reminders for individual licence verifications.
Reasons for Checking Driving Records
Primarily, the reason to check your employees’ driving licences is to ensure they are legally qualified to operate their vehicles.
Ideally, drivers would inform employers about any licence updates or penalty points, but this is often not the case.
A 2017 RAC insurance survey revealed that 25% of drivers with penalty points failed to notify their employers.
In addition to this, it was revealed that only 13% of drivers would voluntarily inform their employers about new points.
How would you find out if your drivers have picked up points on their licence under your current procedures?
Consequences of Neglecting Licence Checks
According to the Road Traffic Act 1988, it is an offence: “To use cause or permit another to use a motor vehicle or trailer on a road which might for whatever reason, involve a danger of injury to any person.”
This means that as an organisation managing a fleet of vehicles, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your drivers are lawfully operating their vehicles.
This covers everything from safety checking a vehicle to ensuring the driver is legally allowed to be behind the wheel.
You can’t leave any of this to chance. Or as previously discussed, rely solely on your drivers telling you if they’ve accumulated points on their licence.
Fleet managers need to be proactive in checking their drivers are safe and legal to drive, and there is no easier and more efficient way to do this than using FleetCheck LicenceAssured.