Drive Alive offer professional Grey Fleet Management and Safety Compliance services that provide thorough checks of your employees personal car records to see if they are in line with UK road safety laws, duty of care obligations, and corporate compliance requirements.
Does your employee want to use their personal car for business use? You’ve come to the right place!
We perform these checks for anyone who needs a second opinion, or believe the checks are inconsistent. Our goal at Drive Alive is to give you confidence that your company is safe, compliant, and protected.
If your employee asks to use their personal car for business use, it’s important as their employer to ask these three questions:
Employees may use their own car to alleviate the time pressure and added costs of public transport or carpooling.
Additionally, employees may be personally liable for any damages whilst driving for work, along with casual wear and tear of their vehicle. Grey Fleet insurance will make these issues cheaper for them, and more helpful to your business long term.
As an employer and business constituent, you have a duty of care to your employees whilst they are employed by you. Policies are created to benefit both the company and the employee. You need to check their MOT, Tax, Insurance policies and licence regularly to reduce the risk of legal and financial consequences to the company.
In order to carefully track employees vehicles, you will need to hold records of up-to-date details on mileage use, MOT, Tax and Insurance documents. You will have to check their licences regularly and vehicle inspections to check that their vehicle aligns with UK road safety law. If left undealt with, your company may be liable for negligence or corporate fraud.
We will check everything for you! From MOT, to Tax, to Insurance, Mileage and Licence details. We have you covered.
Our Road Safety Compliance Software will have all of the details you need dealt with. We take this problem and provide an easy, quick and comprehensive solution, allowing you to see exactly what needs to be dealt with and how urgent it is. Our goal is to take care of the things that require lots of time and effort, allowing you to keep running successful businesses.
Grey Fleet Legal Requirements involve the employee and employer ensuring that the vehicle is insured specifically for business use, roadworthy and safe for driving, taxed and MOT’d accordingly with the regulations of the UK law.
Grey Fleet Legal Requirements guarantee that companies and employers have a duty of care to the employee to ensure that the driver is licenced, a safe and competent driver, and that the vehicle is safe to use for business purposes. Employers must also have their grey fleet user recorded for safety regulations of the driver. Failure to correspond with grey fleet legal requirements will result in risks to insurance, potential damage to the vehicle or injury to the drivers and surrounding road users.
Book a Grey Fleet Compliance AuditSafety and maintenance are of paramount concern when operating a vehicle fleet, especially so if the fleet consists of a variety of vehicle types and makes.
Managing a Grey Fleet can have different time and cost implications to operating a Company Owned Fleet, where a great deal of the collation of vehicle data is carried out by that Fleet provider.
Effective Grey Fleet Management can have its benefits over managing company owned vehicles however, it can pose problems which don’t exist when dealing only with business vehicles.
Regardless of vehicle ownership, if the vehicle is being used for business, it is essential that the ‘Employer’ has an efficient data storage platform that is accessible by the relevant Fleet Managers. This platform should be capable of storing the following information and should be able to accept regular updates and prompting mechanisms to ensure accuracy.
What Drive Alive checks
Business insurance
Business use cover is required for anyone who drives for business trips no matter the frequency.
Valid MOT
A valid MOT is required on the third anniversary of the vehicle registration, or the anniversary of its last MOT, if it’s over 3 years old.
VEHICLE Tax
Vehicle Tax is required for all vehicles registered and used in the UK. Drivers MUST tax their vehicle, even if they are exempt from paying any fees.
Service Intervals
Regular service intervals are required to ensure opptimum safety of the driver and other road users, whilst prolonging the lifespan of the vehicle.
Safety Checks
Regular vehicle safety checks should be carried out by the driver, to ensure maximum safety of all road users prior to use.
Driving Licence Checks
A Driving Licence Check report reveals licence validity, category entitlement and any driving convictions or bans.
We hope to help you stay compliant with vehicle regulations which can be time-consuming and prone to error when managed manually. We have partnered with Verifleet to automatically identify the validation of MOT status, road tax, and insurance, ensuring that every grey fleet used for business is legally compliant at all times. This will eliminate time and keep everything up to date.
Our risk profiling makes it possible to identify potential issues before they become serious problems. By analysing the vehicle condition, driver behaviour, and compliance data, our software flags high-risk vehicles and highlights critical safety concerns. This proactive approach enables businesses to reduce accident risks, protect employees, and lower insurance costs, while also fostering a culture of safety for employees and roads.
We validate driver credentials; a critical aspect of compliance and safety, which can often be resource-intensive. Our software simplifies this process through seamless integration with DVLA records, automating the validation of driving licenses. This will make sure that only qualified drivers are behind the wheel, reduces administrative overhead, and provides a transparent audit trail for compliance purposes.
Our Grey Fleet Management Software produces insights into when things have been completed, if there are errors with a Grey Fleet driver, and how critical those errors are. This is to show the efficacy of how fast you can resolve these situations before they become critical errors and potential UK Law breaks.
Book todayOur Grey Fleet Management DART Software provides details on when Actions need to be taken for individual drivers, alongside how quickly the actions need to be taken before it becomes critical.
Our DART system will provide information on what specifically needs to be checked, for Insurance, MOT, Tax and Vehicle Inspections. This will help your company keep effective and organised schedules for your drivers.
Our Grey Fleet software will go into comprehensive details on each individual vehicle on the road under your company’s grey fleet, and their individual needs to stay up to date with UK Law and Safety Compliance.
Our DART system responds to immediate changes in Grey Fleet reports, changing the status of Tasks from ‘To Do’ to ‘In Progress and ‘Completed’, as well as the date changes between tasks, enabling safe organisation.
Grey fleet management involves checking the insurance policy for rights to use the vehicle for work purposes, checking the vehicle is MOT’d and taxed accordingly, checking vehicle safety for road use, recording approvals, monitoring the mileage on the vehicle, and ensuring drivers have valid driving licences before allowing them on the road. These policies and procedures should be clear and documented for all employees using their own vehicles for work. If they are left undocumented, the company may be subjected to negligence charges, or corporate fraud if it is left undocumented on purpose to benefit the company.
A grey fleet can be managed by a fleet manager, HR professional, or any responsible person appointed by the company. They are responsible for keeping hold of all grey fleet records, checking driver and vehicle compliance with UK law and safety regulations, and making sure all vehicles and drivers meet legal and company standards.
A grey fleet user is an employee who is given permission by the company they work for, to use a vehicle for work purposes.
A grey fleet vehicle is owned by the employee, and the employee must provide sufficient insurance that expressly states the vehicle is used for business purposes. The company must check the vehicle and vehicle user to ensure safety and a duty of care. Grey fleet vehicles could be anything from office workers driving to meetings, private taxi services and more.
Anyone who has express permission from the organisation to use a grey fleet vehicle, and who is covered under the vehicle owner’s insurance and holds a valid driving licence for the vehicle, is allowed to drive. Grey fleet vehicles need careful management because they are employee-owned, so the organisation must ensure each vehicle is insured for business use and safe to drive.
It is important to note that the organisation does not take out the insurance for grey fleet vehicles. Permission to use grey fleet transport must be expressly granted by the organisation, and vehicles can only be used for work purposes. Nobody outside the organisation can use grey fleet vehicles, and staff cannot use them for personal purposes unless explicitly permitted.
Insurance companies will respond to this question differently due to the coverage level and potential risk profile of the organisation seeking insurance details. For most companies, they will find insurance costs around £40 to £100 per vehicle per month, but this can range for many reasons.
If the company has a lot of younger or inexperienced drivers, if the company has a lot of driving bans or accidents in its history, or if the company drivers have only standard driving licences where other companies have specialised licences, the insurance might change.
If the company uses fleets more often than other companies in that sector, such as a taxi services in comparison with an office-based business, the insurance may be higher. Alongside this, two companies using fleets for similar reasons may have different insurance rates based on area, such as if one company is based in a crime-ridden area or areas with dangerous roads. This is yet again to anticipate more potential risk.
Another identifiable difference between insurance costs for different grey fleet users may be the type of vehicle used. If one company uses more expensive vehicles, the insurance cost might be raised accordingly to anticipate expensive repair in case of accidents. Grey fleets may also have higher insurance costs due to how regularly they service their vehicles and do training checks on their employees.
Grey fleet vehicles are primarily employee-owned and used specifically for work purposes. Grey fleet vehicles are insured through the employee’s insurance policy and used by the employee for business purposes. If an employee using a grey fleet vehicle fails to use it reasons not covered in the insurance policy, their insurance may be at risk. Companies and employers have a duty of care to make sure that the employee using the grey fleet vehicle are trained and licenced because the company is legally responsible for any work-related driving. Companies must do this by ensuring their employees are trained and equipped with road regulations, checking their vehicle is safe for road use and insured for business use, along with keeping a record of the employee using the grey fleet vehicle.
In comparison, dark fleet vehicles are owned by the company but not formally insured or recorded for business usage. They are illegal and extremely unsafe to all participants -employee and employer- if caught. If a company genuinely does not realise the vehicles haven’t been properly insured or recorded, it’s negligence, mismanagement, or non-compliance. However, if a company intentionally underreports or misrepresents vehicle insurance or usage to save money or deceive regulators/insurers, that can be considered insurance fraud or corporate fraud by the company. The employee is generally not considered liable for unresponsible negligence on part of the company, however, may be seen as liable if they know of the behaviour and don’t report it.
