O-licence maintenance records: what DVSA expects

The licence is a set of promises about a system

An operator’s licence is granted on undertakings: that vehicles and trailers will be kept fit and serviceable, that they will be inspected at stated intervals, that drivers will report defects and those reports be acted on, and that records of all of it will be kept and produced on request.

Every one of those is a promise about a system rather than about a particular lorry. That has an uncomfortable consequence, and it is the single most important thing in this article: the only evidence that a system exists is paper. A fleet in genuinely good order with thin, patchy records is indistinguishable, from the outside, from a fleet that has never been looked at. Traffic commissioners see both, and they can only judge what is put in front of them.

What a compliant inspection record looks like

A safety inspection sheet should identify the vehicle or trailer unambiguously — a registration, or a trailer identification number, not a fleet nickname. It should carry the date, the odometer reading, the name and signature of whoever carried out the inspection, and a list of the items inspected with a result against each one. A blanket “all OK” is not a record of an inspection; it is a record of somebody signing a sheet.

Defects go on it item by item, and then — the half that gets missed — what was done about each, by whom and when. Finally a declaration that the vehicle is roadworthy, signed by someone competent to make it.

Two weaknesses account for most of the poor records we see. The first is defects listed with nothing recorded against them: the sheet proves a fault was found and proves nothing about it being fixed. The second is a roadworthiness declaration signed on a sheet that still has open defects above it — worse than no record at all, because it is evidence you knew and signed anyway.

Driver defect reporting is the same chain

The walkaround check a driver carries out before first use is part of the maintenance system, not a separate ritual, and it is judged the same way. Reports should be recorded whether or not anything was found — a nil return is a record that the check happened — and each report has to reach someone who decides what to do about it.

The loop closes when the action taken is written against the report and signed. A defect report that goes into a box on the wall and is never acted on is the same failure as an inspection sheet with unrectified defects, committed by a different person.

Intervals and retention: the part we will not put a number on

The two questions we get asked most are how often a vehicle should be inspected and how long the records have to be kept. We are not going to answer either with a figure, and you should be wary of any website that does.

Your inspection interval is not a universal constant. It is what your own licence states, and DVSA’s guidance describes reviewing it against the way the vehicle actually works — mileage, load, terrain, age, operating conditions and what your records show is happening to it. An operator running tippers off site and an operator trunking on motorways are not in the same position, and a number lifted from a general article does not know which one you are. The same applies to retention: it is set out in guidance and in your licence, not by us.

Check the conditions on your operator’s licence and the current DVSA guide to maintaining roadworthiness. If you would rather ask a person, ring 01527 870400 and we will point you at the right source rather than guess at it — a confidently wrong compliance figure is a genuinely expensive thing to act on.

What you should be able to produce, and how quickly

The test is not whether the records exist somewhere. It is whether you can produce them. At a maintenance investigation or a public inquiry, an examiner names a vehicle and expects the inspection history, the driver defect reports and their rectification, brake test records, annual test history and the trailer records as well as the unit’s — in order, and quickly.

That is where outsourced maintenance catches operators out. Work done by a contractor is fine; records held only by that contractor, retrievable when they get round to it, are not really held by you at all. Get copies as the work is done, not when you need them.

Legibility and an honest audit trail matter as much as content. Records should be readable, amendments visible as amendments rather than erased, and someone in the business should demonstrably review the whole picture rather than file it. A defect recurring across a fleet is what a reviewer is meant to spot — and what an examiner will spot if nobody in-house has.

Where we fit

We carry out safety inspections and servicing on commercial vehicles and trailers at Aston Fields in Bromsgrove, and you leave with the record — an inspection sheet that identifies the vehicle, lists what was checked, records what was found and what was done about it, and is signed. Brake performance testing is on our own equipment, and we are an authorised service centre for WABCO, Knorr-Bremse and SAF and handle Haldex ABS and EBS.

We are FORS approved and an HS2 approved supplier, and we run our own fleet from the same yard. If you want your inspections and your annual testing under one roof, call 01527 870400.