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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.
Transport managers and compliance specialists 20+ years practical experience Fixed written quotes
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 your fixed written quoteVans 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. There is no traffic commissioner watching, usually no undertakings signed, and often no transport manager. That gap shows at the roadside. In 25 years of attending DVSA checks we have watched 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, vans over 2.5 tonnes now need a standard international 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. We have sat in public inquiries where the state of the van fleet was used as evidence of the 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. There is no tachograph requirement for most van work, which means 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. A driver who exceeds the domestic limits commits an offence, and so does the employer who caused or permitted it.
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. In DVSA investigations we have seen working time treated as the tell: if an operator cannot show working time records, examiners tend to assume the rest of the paperwork is just as thin.
A van gets one MOT a year and, in many fleets, nothing else. That makes the daily walkaround check the only inspection most vans ever 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.
Defect reporting must be 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. Vans are overloaded more often than any other vehicle type we see stopped, 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 your fixed written 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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