Driving for Work: Who Says It’s a Legal Requirement to Manage?
That’s a question I get asked time and time again, and for many, the idea that there is a legal requirement to manage driver safety comes as a bit of a surprise.
I’ll explain…
When and employee drives on behalf of their employer, excluding their commute to and from their normal place of work, their vehicle becomes their workplace and therefore the duty of care requirements to manage the safety and wellbeing of their staff is the responsibility of the employer, it falls under the Health & Safety at work act and a few other pieces of legislation.
This applies to all sorts of organisations, not just businesses, but charities, educational establishments, volunteer groups, in fact, any organisation that has people who drive in order to carry out work on behalf of that organisation. This includes employees as well as those providing their time as a volunteer.
The Health and Safety Executive have for many years published guidelines, explaining to employers exactly what they need in place to meet these duty of care obligations, but, this is an area of health and safety that is all too often neglected, not deliberately, but because…
You don’t know what you don’t know…
I get that; however, ignorance of the law will never stack up in Court!
If an employee gets involved in a serious road traffic incident, investigations may well come the employers way, this is when they will discover the hard way, what they should have had in place.
Should it be deduced that their arrangements for managing driver safety were inadequate, the organisation could end up in Court…
Fines for a breach in health and safety are based on a percentage of turnover, typical starting point fines are 20% of turnover…
Who has that kind of money stashed away, as a ‘just in case’?
Or for the more serious cases, a custodial sentence under the Corporate Manslaughter Act, it’s the person at the top, the controlling mind of the organisation that will have to take one for the team, a prison sentence is not a nice one to have to take!
But we don’t have anyone who drives a company vehicle, they all drive their own vehicle, so we are okay, right?
Nope, sorry to burst that bubble, as far as the law is concerned, you have the same duty of care towards those who drive their own vehicle for work as you do for those who drive company provided vehicles, it’s referred to as your grey fleet, I’ll cover this in more detail in another blog.
So, here’s the basics…
If you have five or more employees, and any of those drive a vehicle as part of their job, regardless of how frequent, or whether it’s in their own vehicle or one supplied by the organisation, driver safety must be managed and documented.
Have you got it covered?
If you want to know whether you cover driver safety adequately, click HERE to go to my website media page, on there is a short video, about 6 minutes, it shows what happens when the Police come knocking on your door following an incident involving one of your employees.
As you watch this video, imagine you are the MD being interviewed by the Police Officer, would you (right now) be able to provide him with everything he is asking for, or, would you be running around like a headless chicken?
Let’s talk!
If you feeling a tad concerned, let’s have a chat, I’ll explain how easy it is and without breaking the bank, how you could have everything in place so you could say ‘yes’ to that Police officer.
Thank you to Road Safe NI Charity for allowing me to use this video.
