The Health and Safety at Work Act may have arrived as long ago as 1974, but it wasn’t until 2003 that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) directed its attention towards that largely forgotten workplace environment – the company car and van fleet.

Those years up to 2003 produced some bizarre anomalies in company car procurement. Changes in the personal tax system stimulated part-funding by users, so it was not unknown for exotic cars like TVRs and Ford Cosworths to arrive in the pare to be driven on business by relatively junior staff, being largely out of sight and out of mind by many employers in a period when very few employers were aware of their full responsibilities in this situation.

Unfortunateley such lack of awareness still exists in some areas.

The HSE’s Driving at Work initiative brought the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the later Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 right into the driving seat of the company car and the van fleet insurance customer.

Up to that point, the concept of the vehicle environment as being part of the traditional workplace had not largely been conceived by employers, who were now faced with a number of questions:-

• How can company car fleet employers acquire suitable driving risk assessments of individuals? Not only to assess every risk to their own employees, but also to others not in their employ?
• What protective measures can car fleet employers take to establish effective monitoring and reviews of all such measures?
• How do they provide appropriate health surveillance where necessary?
• How to provide relevant information and training to fleet employees about the risks identified by the assessment. What exactly constitutes ‘appropriate training’?
• What about relevant training for new recruits, or on a relevant change of responsibility or risk?
• And the periodical repeat of relevant training?
• What steps should be taken to take into account the capabilities of fleet employees when allocating tasks? (It has not been unknown for staff to be allocated a company car for their work, who do not in fact possess a driving licence!)
• And in all this, all training must take place during working hours.

The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 require that all employees have adequate training to operate work equipment safely. Legal responsibility for this falls into four areas:-

• A work-related road safety policy, setting out the strategy and methods by which compliance can be achieved
• Risk assessment for individual drivers possessing different levels of experience and exposure. (The HSE believes the mere possession of a driving licence is NOT evidence of competency when driving for work)
• Appropriate training, which can range from e-learning to hands-on driver awareness training
• Records. The employer must be able to prove the steps the business has taken to ensure the safety of its employees while driving on business.

Negligence and duty of care

Just as a vicarious liability can fall upon the employer in the traditional workplace for any negligence or lack of duty of care, so a vehicle being driven on the road on company business can similarly involve the employer.

There is the possibility of Magistrate Court fines for companies up to £20,000 and up to £5,000 and up to six months’ imprisonment for directors and employees. If the case goes to the Crown Court the company fine becomes unlimited, as does that the directors or employees who also face the possibility of up to two years imprisonment.

Wider responsibilities arrived with the Road Safety Act 2006 which introduced the following changes:-

• The penalty for using a hand-held mobile phone while driving is now endorsable and has a higher fine.
• The new offence was created causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving.
• The newly created offence of ’cause or permit’ may reflect on companies.
• Drivers face a discretionary disqualification for a first offence.
• There is a new provision whereby a person convicted of a specified offence (such as careless driving, speeding, traffic sign offences or motorway offences) and may already have between 7 to 11 points on their licence may not necessarily be disqualified. If they choose, they can now pay for and successfully undertake an approved course within 10 months and get three of the points for this new offence to last for only 12 months instead of three years.

The Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007 takes matters even further via the creation of the prospect of prosecution of companies for manslaughter in the event of a breach of relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased.

Conclusion

All these changes have dramatically raised the level of threat to all business organisations, but particularly to the small and medium firms, with the suggestion that company car and van fleets will be amongst the first to be prosecuted.

There is no sign of on any such corporate manslaughter cases as yet, although despite significant reductions in the number of work related deaths, over 800 employees were killed on UK roads in 2009. This number exceeds all other work related deaths combined by three, so the odds are that a driving death will lead to prosecutions under this Act.

These changes have made risk management procedures essential as a means of protecting organisations against vehicle related losses. The old concept of relying solely on insurance indemnity is now very short-sighted. Today’s answer is the provision of a much more proactive stance working towards preventing claims from happening in the first place.

Effective risk management should include the following steps:-

• Preparation and communication of a policy statement. Clear documented guidelines will tell managers and employees what is expected of them
• Implementation of risk control measures. The business needs to assess risks so that it can decide how best to control them
• Measurement of performance to tell the organisation where to start and what it has achieved
• Continued improvement and learning from experience. Programmes need to reflect the evolution of the business
• Maintaining full records of each of the above steps