Fleet compliance is about keeping every vehicle and driver legal and safe, and being able to prove it. Most problems do not come from cutting corners. They come from dates being missed, usually by a business that believed it was on top of things.
This checklist covers what a UK company running cars and vans needs to stay on top of, how often each item needs doing, and what evidence to keep. Where something is a legal requirement we say so. Where it is good practice expected under your duty of care rather than written into law, we say that too, because the two get blurred constantly and the difference matters when you are deciding where to spend your time.
What Fleet Compliance Actually Covers
Three things: the vehicles, the drivers, and the records that prove you managed both. Most businesses are reasonable at the first, patchy on the second and weakest on the third. The third is the one that matters after an incident, because the question is never what you believed. It is what you can demonstrate.
The Vehicle Checklist
MOT
Legal requirement. Cars and vans need an MOT once they are three years old, then annually. There is no grace period, and driving without a valid MOT can invalidate your insurance as well as attracting a fine. Track the due date, not the test date, and book early enough that a failure still leaves time to put right. We cover this in MOT management.
Servicing and maintenance
Good practice, and a duty of care obligation. There is no law saying you must service a van at a set interval, but you must provide a vehicle that is safe for work. Service to the manufacturer schedule, record what was done, and keep the invoices. See vehicle maintenance.
Vehicle tax
Legal requirement. Every vehicle must be taxed or declared SORN. Tax does not transfer when a vehicle changes hands, which is where fleets most often get caught out.
Insurance
Legal requirement. Cover must be valid and appropriate for the use. Under continuous insurance enforcement, a vehicle that is neither insured nor declared SORN is an offence in itself, whether or not anyone drives it.
Daily walkaround checks and defect reporting
Legal requirement where an operator licence applies, good practice otherwise. For goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes this is a formal requirement with recorded checks. For cars and vans it is not, but a documented daily check is one of the strongest pieces of evidence you can have, and it is how most faults get caught before they become breakdowns. The check is only worth doing if defects are logged and actioned.
Tyres
Legal requirement. Minimum tread depth is 1.6mm across the central three quarters of the tyre, and condition and pressure must be safe. Tyres are the most common roadside defect and the easiest to catch with a routine check.
Outstanding safety recalls
Good practice. A manufacturer recall is not an offence to ignore, but running a vehicle with a known unrepaired safety defect is difficult to defend after an incident. Recall status is published against the registration, so it can be checked as part of a routine review.
The Driver Checklist
Licence checks
Good practice, and a duty of care expectation. There is no single statutory interval for ordinary company drivers. Common practice is risk-based: more often for high-mileage drivers or anyone carrying endorsements, less often for occasional drivers. What matters is that you check, that you record the result, and that the interval is deliberate rather than accidental.
Entitlement for the vehicle
Legal requirement. The licence has to cover the category actually being driven. This catches people out with larger vans and with drivers who passed their test after January 1997, whose entitlement differs from older licences.
Eyesight and fitness to drive
Legal requirement on the driver, duty of care on you. Drivers must meet the eyesight standard and declare relevant medical conditions. You cannot test this for them, but you can ask, record the declaration and repeat it periodically.
Grey fleet drivers
The most commonly missed item on this list. If staff drive their own cars for work, the same duty applies, and the usual gap is insurance: many personal policies cover social, domestic and pleasure plus commuting, which does not extend to driving between sites or to clients. Business use normally has to be added, and most drivers do not know that. See grey fleet management.
Drivers’ hours and tachographs
Legal requirement for vehicles in scope. Mainly relevant above 3.5 tonnes. If none of your vehicles are in scope this does not apply to you, and plenty of generic checklists will tell you otherwise.
A written driver policy
Good practice. Set out what you expect on mobile phone use, alcohol, reporting incidents, reporting penalty points and reporting defects. A policy nobody has read is weak evidence. A policy drivers have signed is strong evidence.
The Records to Keep
This is the part that turns compliance from something you believe into something you can prove. For every vehicle you want the MOT and service history, tax and insurance status, defect reports and what was done about them, and the repair invoices. For every driver you want the licence check results with dates, their entitlement, their signed policy, and any risk assessment or training.
Two rules make the difference. Everything is dated, and everything is in one place. Records scattered across inboxes, a shared drive and somebody’s filing cabinet are not an audit trail, they are a search. We take this on as part of fleet administration.
How Often Should Each Check Happen?
- Daily: walkaround check and defect reporting, before the vehicle is used
- Weekly: tyre pressures, tread and fluid levels
- Monthly: review defects raised and closed, and anything approaching an expiry date
- Quarterly to annually: driver licence checks, set by risk rather than by habit
- Annually: MOT, insurance renewal, driver policy re-sign, and a review of the whole fleet position
- To schedule: servicing, by manufacturer interval or mileage, whichever falls first
What Happens If You Get It Wrong
The consequences scale with what was missed. At the lower end, fines and penalty points. Further up, a prohibition that takes a vehicle off the road immediately, which costs you the job as well as the repair.
Two consequences are worse than they first appear. An expired MOT or an uninsured use can invalidate cover at exactly the moment you need it. And where an operator licence is involved, repeated failures put the licence itself at risk, which is a threat to the business rather than to a vehicle.
The serious exposure, though, is corporate. If someone is hurt in a vehicle you provided or permitted, the investigation looks at what you checked and when. A business with dated records is in a very different position from one relying on the recollection of whoever was handling it at the time.
How to Stay on Top of It
The reliable approach is to track every date centrally and act in advance, rather than reacting when something expires. In practice that means one place holding every date, a named person responsible, a reminder window long enough to absorb a failure, and evidence captured as the work happens rather than reconstructed later.
That is what our fleet compliance service does, with MOT management and maintenance handled alongside it so a due date and the resulting work are one process rather than three conversations. If you are weighing up whether to keep this in-house, our guide on whether to outsource your fleet goes through that decision.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is fleet compliance?
Fleet compliance is the set of legal and safety obligations that come with running vehicles for work: keeping each vehicle roadworthy, taxed, insured and tested, making sure drivers are licensed and fit to drive, and keeping dated records that evidence both.
How often should driver licences be checked?
There is no single legal interval for ordinary company drivers. Most businesses check between quarterly and annually, more often for high-mileage drivers or those with endorsements. The important part is that the interval is deliberate, applied consistently and recorded.
Do daily walkaround checks apply to vans?
They are a formal requirement for goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes under an operator licence. For cars and vans they are good practice rather than law, but they remain one of the most useful habits you can have, both for catching faults early and for evidencing that you managed the risk.
Does fleet compliance apply to staff using their own cars?
Yes. Health and safety law applies to driving for work regardless of who owns the vehicle. The common gap is business-use insurance, which many personal policies do not include.
How long should we keep fleet records?
Keep them for as long as they could be needed to evidence what you did, which in practice means several years rather than months. Dated records of checks, defects and repairs are the part that matters most.
Who is responsible for fleet compliance?
The employer. You can outsource the work and the record-keeping, and we do exactly that for companies across the UK, but the legal duty stays with your business and, where an operator licence applies, with the licence holder.