DRIVER INFRINGEMENTS, AND HOW WE HANDLE THEM
Given to every driver, and to every client · Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005; drivers' hours rules; Article 15 UK GDPR
This goes to every driver before their first shift and to every client before we supply one. Both of you should know how this works before anything goes wrong, because a policy produced after the event is not a policy, it is an excuse.
1. Who decides what
1.1 The client holds the operator's licence. On their vehicles and their operation, the client has the final say on whether a driver is suitable, and their own compliance rules apply on top of ours where they are stricter. Nothing here overrides that.
1.2 What we decide is whether we offer a driver further work through us. Those are two different decisions and we will not pretend one is the other.
1.3 We rely on clients telling us straight away when something is flagged. A compliance report we see six weeks later helps nobody, least of all the driver, who by then cannot remember the day.
2. What we check, and how often
2.1 Before a first assignment: licence and categories, CPC, digital card, and any entitlement the vehicle or the load requires. We check the licence against the DVLA record with the driver's permission, not against a photocopy.
2.2 Every three months while a driver is working through us: licence check and infringement record. Not annually, and not when somebody remembers.
2.3 If a driver's entitlement changes, they tell us the same day. That includes points, a medical restriction, and a card that has stopped working.
3. Minor and major, defined rather than illustrated
3.1 A MINOR infringement is one that broke a rule without endangering anybody and without any attempt to conceal it. A break taken a few minutes late. A daily rest short by a small margin. A missing manual entry. A country symbol not recorded.
3.2 A MAJOR infringement is one of these, and this is the whole list rather than examples of it:
- Driving without a card inserted.
- Making a false record, or altering a real one.
- Holding or using more than one card, or using somebody else's.
- Knowingly breaking the drivers' hours or working time rules, as opposed to running over them.
- Anything that leads to a licence being suspended or revoked.
- Driving while unfit, whether through drink, drugs, prescribed medication or exhaustion.
3.3 The difference between the two is whether it was an error or a decision. A tired driver who ran nine minutes over is not in the same business as one who pulled the card out.
4. What happens, step by step
4.1 It is written down. Whoever raises it, the driver or the client, it goes on the record the same day with the date, what happened, and where the information came from.
4.2 The driver is told, and asked. Within one working day the driver is told what has been logged and invited to give their account, which is written on the record next to it. This is the part most policies leave out. Compliance systems produce false readings: a unit fault, a card another driver pulled, a manual entry typed wrong, a job the client dispatched knowing it could not be done inside the hours. A record with only one side of it on it is not a record, it is an allegation with a date.
4.3 Nothing is decided before the driver has been asked. Except where clause 5 applies.
4.4 More than three minor infringements in three months brings a review, by a manager who was not the person who logged them. The driver's account is in front of them. The outcome is to carry on, to carry on with agreed training, or to stop offering work.
4.5 Minor infringements come off the record after three months. They are not held indefinitely and they do not accumulate for ever.
5. Major infringements
5.1 Logged immediately and taken to the most senior person available, not to whoever is on the desk.
5.2 The driver comes off assignments straight away while it is looked at. That is not a finding against them and it is not a disciplinary sanction: it is what you do when the answer is not yet known and a vehicle is involved. If the driver is on shift, the client is told at once and we source a replacement.
5.3 The driver still gets to give their account, and it still goes on the record. Suspended does not mean unheard.
5.4 If it is made out, we stop offering work. Records of major infringements are kept for the period in our retention policy and not longer.
5.5 If it is not made out, the record says so in the same words and with the same prominence, and the driver goes back on assignments. We will tell the client that as plainly as we told them the original.
6. When the booking caused it
6.1 Some infringements are made in an office, not in a cab. A run dispatched that cannot be done inside the hours. A delivery slot with no legal place to stop. A load that turned up three hours late with the same deadline on it. A tip that keeps a driver waiting past their rest.
6.2 Where that is what happened, it is recorded against the booking and raised with the client, and it does not count towards the driver's three. A driver who was set up to fail did not fail.
6.3 If a client's bookings keep producing these, that is a conversation about the client's planning, and we will have it. If it does not change, we stop supplying them. That is a commercial cost to us and we would rather carry it than send drivers into it.
7. What the driver is entitled to
- To see their own record, in full, any time they ask, without giving a reason and without it counting against them. That is also a right under Article 15 of the UK GDPR and we are not going to make anybody quote it at us.
- To have their account written on the record before a decision.
- To have a decision made by somebody who did not log it.
- To be told what was passed to a client about them, and when.
- To have a correction made, in writing, when the record is wrong.
8. What we will never do
- Ask a driver to drive on somebody else's card, leave a gap, or record rest they did not take.
- Take a job we can see cannot be done inside the hours and leave the driver to work out the rest.
- Pass an infringement to a client without telling the driver we have.
- Hold a minor infringement against somebody a year later.
- Treat a driver who reported their own mistake worse than one who hoped nobody noticed. The opposite: telling us yourself is taken into account and it is meant to be.
HIRINGUK LTD, company number 17414012. Driver infringements, and how we handle them, version 1.0. Reviewed at least once a year and whenever the law changes. © HIRINGUK LTD. This document is issued under Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005; drivers' hours rules; Article 15 UK GDPR.