One in five company car and van drivers is one offence away from a ban

One in five company car and van drivers is just a single offence away from a ban - while one in 100 are only one point away from losing their licence

Research carried out by fleet software market leader CFC Solutions shows that 20% of drivers have between 3-11 points on their licence while one per cent have 11 points.

The findings come from checks made using CFC’s free-to-adopt Licence Link software, which allows fleets to communicate online directly with the DVLA to gain licence details.

Licence Link was launched at the start of 2009 and is proving to be the fastest selling product that CFC has created in its three decades of writing software for fleets.

Neville Briggs, managing director at CFC, said: “These findings underline the importance of fleets undertaking regular licence checks. A driver who is one offence away from a ban represents a significant risk management issue for an employer as well as a potential operational problem if they are penalised and banned in the future.

“Also, of course, drivers who have any points at all need to be regularly checked. They are a high-risk group on your fleet and should be monitored regularly and carefully.”

Individual cases highlighted by Licence Link include a driver who had an undeclared full driving ban and another who declared a full licence but only held a provisional one.

Briggs said: “Thankfully, the number of drivers highlighted by Licence Link who should not be driving at all has been low but we have found a number of worrying instances.

“Sometimes these employees are acting maliciously by, for example, not declaring a ban because they know they will lose their job. At other times, they made an inadvertent mistake by perhaps being confused over which classes of vehicle they can drive.

“However, in all cases, they represented a risk management issue to their employer.”

Briggs added that the success of Licence Link during its first year on sale had been thanks to a strong desire on the part of fleets to make thorough licence checks.

He said: “Licence Link is a product that seems to have hit a sweet spot in the market and is rapidly being adopted by all kinds of fleets in all kinds of sectors of the industry.

“The key strengths of the product – its effectiveness, its simplicity, its ease of adoption and delivery through free software with checks only paid for as they are needed – all mean that it proving to be the licence checking tool of choice for hundreds of fleets.”

Licence Link is designed to help all employers simplify the routine task of regularly checking car and van driver licence information through a web based system - something made essential by the recent introduction of risk management legislation.

Once basic driving licence information is entered onto Licence Link, fleet managers can choose how often automatic checks are made with the DVLA database – for example, annually for low mileage drivers or more often for high mileage, high risk employees.

Risk summary reports will automatically group drivers into different levels of risk group – for example, those with 1-3, 4-7, 8-12 and 12 plus points, and Licence Link can be set up so that those with higher numbers of points are checked more often.

Automatic alerts are sent to the fleet manager if the DVLA checks show changes to endorsements, the categories of vehicle that an employee is allowed to drive or if there are critical licence events such as disqualification or a photo card expiring.

Further features in Licence Link include the ability to upload and store document scans against each driver record, such as an image of each driver’s licence and driver declarations. These files are held online and encrypted for security purposes.

Access to Licence Link is via a credit payment scheme. To run checks, a company buys credits in advance and as each licence check is made, the system displays the credits remaining, providing a constant balance reminder for the fleet manager.