Vehicle and journey scope: vehicle weights, trailers, business use, domestic or international work and the rules that follow from them.
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Vans move more goods around the UK than ever, yet most van fleets operate with none of the structure that operator licensing forces on HGV fleets.
Vans move more goods around the UK than ever, yet most van fleets operate with none of the structure that operator licensing forces on HGV fleets.
Clear, practical support written around the operation you run and the evidence an examiner expects to see.
Answer a few focused questions. A transport manager or compliance specialist will review your answers and recommend the right next step.
Get a quoteA van fleet still needs clear controls even when an operator licence is not required. Drivers need to know the vehicle's plated weight, loading limits, daily check process, defect route and the hours rules that apply to the journey.
The legal position is not identical for every van. Vehicle or combination weight, use and destination matter. From 1 July 2026, the assimilated drivers' hours and tachograph rules apply to light goods vehicles or combinations exceeding 2.5 tonnes when used for international transport operations within the UK and EU, unless an exemption applies.
Vehicle and journey scope: vehicle weights, trailers, business use, domestic or international work and the rules that follow from them.
Daily checks and defects: a practical van check, defect reporting, rectification and rules for taking an unsafe vehicle out of service.
Loading and towing: design gross weight, payload, load distribution, restraint, towing limits and tyre pressures.
Drivers' hours: GB domestic rules for most in-scope domestic van work, plus assimilated or AETR rules where vehicle weight and journeys bring them into scope.
Working time and fatigue: the working time regime that applies, rest planning and a clear route for reporting fatigue.
Driver and vehicle documents: licence entitlement, insurance use, MOT, tax, permits and tachograph records where required.
Safe driving rules: speed limits for the vehicle class, phones and apps, reversing, parking and vulnerable road users.
Incidents and evidence: collision, damage, roadside stop and penalty reporting, with photographs and escalation contacts.
Vans move more goods around the UK than ever, yet most van fleets operate with none of the structure that operator licensing forces on HGV fleets. Where no operator licence is required there are no licence undertakings to sign, no traffic commissioner oversight and often no transport manager, so the disciplines that come with an O licence are simply absent. That gap shows at the roadside. Across more than 20 years of transport compliance work we have seen overloaded vans, illegal tyres and drivers who had never been told which rules applied to them, simply because nobody had written those rules down.
A van driver handbook closes that gap. It gives every driver one document that says what the company expects, what the law demands and what happens when the two are ignored. For a van fleet it is usually the cheapest compliance control available, because it replaces assumption with instruction.
Most vans at or below 3.5 tonnes maximum authorised mass need no operator licence for domestic work in Great Britain, and that is exactly why standards drift. The moment a van tows a trailer and the combination exceeds 3.5 tonnes, the picture changes: EU drivers' hours rules and tachograph requirements can apply. On international journeys for hire or reward, a van or combination with a maximum laden weight over 2.5 tonnes needs a standard international goods vehicle operator licence. Plenty of fleets discover both points at the roadside rather than in the office.
A good van driver handbook states plainly which of your vehicles fall on which side of the line, what each driver may and may not tow, and who to ask before hooking up a trailer. If you run vans alongside HGVs on an operator licence, expect DVSA and the traffic commissioner to judge the whole fleet by one standard. The condition of a van fleet can itself be treated as evidence of an operator's general attitude to compliance.
Van drivers on domestic work are covered by the GB domestic drivers' hours rules, not the EU rules that govern most HGV work. The core limits are 10 hours of driving and 11 hours of duty in a day, and the duty limit does not apply on a day when the driver does not drive. There is no tachograph requirement for most van work, and written records are only required where the vehicle needs an operator licence and daily driving exceeds four hours, so for many fleets the only record of compliance is the one you create yourselves.
The 3.5t van driver rules trip fleets up because managers assume the EU limits apply, or assume no limits apply at all. Both assumptions are wrong. Your van driver handbook should set out the domestic limits, the record you expect drivers to keep, and the point at which towing or international work moves a driver onto the EU rules and a tachograph. Exceeding the domestic limits is an offence, and an employer that causes or permits it can be prosecuted as well.
Working time is a separate layer on top of drivers' hours, and van fleets routinely miss it. Drivers on GB domestic rules fall under the Working Time Regulations 1998: an average 48 hour week unless the driver has opted out, rest breaks, and paid annual leave. Drivers in scope of the EU drivers' hours rules are covered instead by the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005, which are stricter and carry no individual opt-out.
The handbook does not need to reproduce the legislation. It needs to tell each driver which regime they are on, what their limits are, how breaks are recorded and who monitors it. Working time records are also an easy thing for an investigator to ask for, and an operator who cannot produce them invites questions about the rest of the paperwork.
Most vans are inspected formally only at the annual MOT, and a new van is exempt from that for its first three years. That makes the daily walkaround check the only routine inspection many vans receive. Require a documented walkaround before first use each day: tyres, lights, wipers, washers, mirrors, load doors, and anything fitted permanently such as racking or a tail lift.
Put defect reporting in writing, even for vans. A verbal comment to a supervisor is not a defect report, and it protects nobody when DVSA asks for evidence.
No van driver handbook is complete without a loading section. Overloading is one of the most common faults we find on van fleets, partly because real payloads are smaller than drivers assume once racking, tools and a passenger are on board. Set out the payload of each vehicle type, the rule on axle weights, and the requirement to restrain loads so nothing moves under braking.
Every van driver handbook should deal with three administrative controls that fail quietly: insurance, licence checks and the grey fleet.
Grey fleet is the control most often missing altogether. If an employee crashes their own vehicle on your errand and it was uninsured for business use, the questions land on your desk as well as theirs.
A van driver handbook only works if drivers sign for it, managers enforce it and someone reviews it. Issue it at induction, take a signed acknowledgement, and refresh it when the law or the fleet changes. Keep it short enough to read in one sitting: a van driver will read thirty clear pages and will not read ninety padded ones.
We write van driver handbook content from what actually goes wrong at the roadside, not from generic HR templates. If your vans share a yard with HGVs, we align the two documents so drivers moving between vehicle types are never given contradictory instructions.
Every document is shaped by transport managers and compliance specialists with more than 20 years of experience, including DVSA investigations, Public Inquiries and Traffic Commissioner hearings.
Get a quoteNo single law demands one, but the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires you to give employees adequate information and instruction. A signed handbook is the standard way to evidence that, and its absence is hard to explain after an incident.
Domestic van work in Great Britain falls under the GB domestic rules: a 10 hour daily driving limit and an 11 hour daily duty limit. Towing a trailer that takes the combination over 3.5 tonnes can bring the stricter EU rules and a tachograph into play.
Not for most domestic work at or under 3.5 tonnes. Combinations over 3.5 tonnes and in-scope international journeys are a different matter, so the handbook should name the vehicles and journey types where a tachograph must be used.
It should. Staff using their own vehicles on company business are working for you at that moment, so the handbook should require business insurance, a valid MOT and a roadworthy vehicle before any grey fleet journey.
At least annually, and immediately after any change to the fleet, the law or your insurance terms. Every reissue should be recorded with a fresh signed acknowledgement from each driver.
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