Fleet office and goods vehicle operator licence. Know what is due and what the licence allows.

Plenty of transport offices still run on a year planner on the wall, a spreadsheet of test dates and a drawer of operator discs. It holds together until someone is off for a fortnight in the month three annual tests fall due and a new unit turns up with no disc.

Your goods vehicle operator licence

GOV.UK’s goods vehicle operator licensing guide describes the licence types. A restricted licence is usually for carrying your own goods. A standard national licence lets you carry your own goods in the UK or abroad, and other people’s goods for hire or reward in the UK. A standard international licence adds hire or reward work abroad. You usually need a licence to use a goods vehicle over 3.5 tonnes gross plated weight for hire or reward or in connection with a trade or business. A licence authorises a maximum number of vehicles and, where it applies, trailers, and the difference between that and what you have is your margin.

HGVault keeps the licence number, type, traffic area, the vehicles and trailers authorised, the discs issued and the review date, and how many to keep in hand before the office is warned. Lorries in the fleet, off the road ones included, are held against the vehicles authorised, and trailers against the trailers.

Operator licence discs

Each disc shows the licence type, the holder’s name and number, the vehicle’s registration and an expiry date, and goes on the near side near the lower edge of the windscreen. A lost or stolen disc has to be reported to the traffic commissioner straight away, in writing. The disc register keeps every disc by the serial number on its back: the lorry it is on or whether it is in the office, duplicates, and what became of it. A lost disc stays red until the date you told the traffic commissioner in writing is recorded. The page flags a lorry on the road with no disc, a disc on a vehicle that has left, and more discs in use than vehicles authorised.

The VOL list, checked both ways

Bring in the vehicle list from the Vehicle Operator Licensing service as the CSV it exports, an Excel workbook or a pasted list of registrations, and HGVault compares it with the fleet in both directions: on VOL and not in the fleet, in the fleet and not on VOL, and on VOL under a registration the vehicle had before. The licensing guide says that where you have a margin a vehicle must be added to the licence within one month of it coming into your possession, and straight away where you have none. A lorry still not on the list a month after it joined shows red, and before that the page shows the date it is due by. Nothing is ever sent to VOL. You make the change there yourself.

VOR

A vehicle goes off the road on a workshop job: ticked by the office, by a technician logging a breakdown or a repair, by a supervisor’s gate check marked not safe, or by a safety inspection or brake test that is not roadworthy. The VOR record, the paper Vehicle Off Road sheet kept on screen, starts when your settings say it should, with the date and the reason, which DVSA’s Guide to maintaining roadworthiness expects on the vehicle’s maintenance file. A walkaround marked not safe never takes a lorry off by itself. It flags the lorry as reported not safe to use until someone trained has checked it.

The forward planner

Each vehicle has its safety inspection interval in weeks and the ISO week of its next one, with a brake test at every inspection or every second or third. The plan runs on through this year and next, comfortably past the six months ahead that both the guide and the licensing guide ask for. The workshop list shows the week: every vehicle due, its last inspection and its outstanding defects. Book an inspection to a day or move it, and moving it with every later one shifts the rest of the plan. The year planner prints as a PDF for the office wall.

MOT, tachograph, tax and tail lifts

GOV.UK’s page on annual tests for HGVs and trailers puts a lorry’s first annual test 12 months after it was first registered, and lorries are usually tested every year after. Each lorry keeps its test due month and how many weeks ahead to book it, the booking and the result with its certificate. With DVSA’s MOT history switched on, results arrive with their defects and advisories, and a lorry can be added to the fleet from its registration alone.

Under the retained tachograph regulation tachographs are inspected by approved workshops at least every two years, so the calibration date is kept with the next one due two years on. Road tax runs to its expiry date.

Regulation 9(3) of LOLER asks for lifting equipment for lifting persons to be thoroughly examined at least every six months, and other lifting equipment at least every 12 months, or in either case in line with an examination scheme. HSE’s guidance on equipment that lifts people says the same six months. Whoever works a tail lift usually rides the platform with the load, so HGVault starts every tail lift on six months. Where nobody ever rides it, or you work to an examination scheme, change the interval in Settings. The lift’s details and every examination are kept with the vehicle.

One calendar for all of it

Inspections, brake tests, annual tests, calibrations, tax, LOLER examinations, re-torques and work booked in sit on one calendar by month or week, with a feed for the office’s own calendar, and on the dashboard under what needs doing. The reminder email lists what is coming up. Each vehicle’s Dates and documents tab has one line per date with where it stands and a button to book it or record it.

Read-only logins

A transport consultant, an auditor or a DVSA examiner can have a login of their own that can look and change nothing, until a date you set. They see the licence page, the dates and the records behind them.