OLCIS eNews – September 2025

Tuesday 23 September 2025

Welcome to the September edition of Logistics UK’s Operator Licensing Compliance Information Service (OLCIS) enews update. This document is a monthly round-up of transport news affecting your commercial vehicle operation. To view previous editions and access your other subscription benefits, visit the dedicated OLCIS hub.

We welcome any comments and suggestions for new topics you would like to see included within OLCIS enews. Contact Customer Services with any feedback.

New Deputy Traffic Commissioners appointed

The Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander, has appointed five new Deputy Traffic Commissioners to support the Traffic Commissioners. They are Mair Williams, Tehniat Watson, Kate Grimley Evans, Giles Pengelly and Rakesh Sharma.

Driver CPC ‘opt out’

If you want to drive professionally both in the UK and Europe, your CPC training must come only from international training courses. On the check your Driver CPC periodic training hours service you can select the ‘opt out’ box which will stop any national courses counting towards your overall training hours. If drivers don’t opt out, they won’t receive the correct international Driver Qualification Card if they have taken national courses.

DVLA form filler service

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has asked Logistics UK to notify members that the D2 and D2/D4 vocational paper application forms, including Welsh versions, available via the Gov.uk Form Filler service, have been decommissioned as of 15 September 2025.

For all vocational renewals, DVLA will automatically send out a reminder with the relevant forms 56 days before expiry. Members are reminded to keep their address up to date, to ensure the forms are sent to the correct address. Addresses can be changed online by visiting Gov.uk here.

Previously, the Form Filler service allowed customers to request paper copies of these forms online. However, this service has been withdrawn, and DVLA is working with the Government Digital Service to remove the functionality from Gov.uk. Customers can still obtain these forms from the Post Office. Please note, this change does not affect bulk orders, which can still be requested by emailing [email protected].

Top questions this month at the Member Advice Centre

Q – What do I do when a new employee joins us in the middle of a reference period?

A – Firstly you need to find out if your new recruit worked as an in-scope mobile worker for their previous employer in the road transport sector during the reference period in question.

If they did, then you must ask them in writing for an account of time spent working for that employer during the reference period. Their previous employer is compelled in law to provide the worker with their working time records on request. You must then include all time worked for the previous employer and you in the working time calculation.

If they did not, for example if they previously worked in a bar or in a warehouse (rather than as a driver) for another company, then all you need to do is count the time worked from the moment they started work for you in the calculation.

Q – A driver has taken annual leave for two days within the fixed week, do we use notional figures?

A – Legislation states that 48-hours must be added into the average working time calculation for each full fixed week of absence, where the worker is absent from work for the whole period beginning at 00:00 on Monday and ending at 24:00 the following Sunday.

Where the absence does not span a full fixed week, eight hours must be added for individual days. These are notional figures that must be used, regardless of the number of hours the worker would have worked. The Department for Transport (DfT) have indicated that for days in which a half day holiday is taken, four hours should be allocated.

Q – One of my new drivers has an EU-issued tachograph card and wishes to exchange this for a UK one, is this possible when the EU tachograph card is still valid?

A – If a driver was to apply to exchange an EU-issued driver tachograph card, this would be possible while they have a valid EU one by using form D777B and have lived in the UK for more than six months in the past year. They should retain their EU card and continue using whilst the application is in process. When they receive their new UK tachograph card, they must start using the UK one immediately and send the EU card to DVLA. A written instruction is sent to the driver at this point.

Compliance news: around the courts

Background

An operator has a standard international operator licence for five vehicles and six trailers. The Traffic Commissioner received a report from a DVSA traffic examiner, that a vehicle had been stopped at the roadside displaying an operator licence disc in a company’s name that had surrendered their licence. The vehicle was being driven by the former director of that company and did not hold their own operator licence.

Evidence

Upon checking the driver’s analogue tachograph charts, it was clear the possession showed that they were the sole and regular driver of the vehicle. The tachograph charts also showed that the vehicle had been parking overnight in two places, neither of which were an authorised operating centre. The traffic examiner at the stop was told that one address was their own house and the other an operating centre on the surrendered operator licence. Additionally, the driver had more than 42 days’ worth of tachograph charts in their possession and had not handed them in by the 42nd day to the operator as legally required. Despite numerous requests by the traffic examiner, data for the other vehicles on the licence were never supplied.

The Traffic Commissioner asked about the relationship between the operator licence holder and driver, and it was viewed as a “general service agreement”, where the driver agreed to provide transport services using their own vehicle. The agreement permitted the driver to sub-contract the transport services to a third party and stipulated that the driver would work “autonomously and not at the direction of the client”. The Traffic Commissioner stated that it appeared to be a classic “transport for hire and reward” agreement rather than any legitimate arrangement under which the driver would operate under the operator licence holders’ control.

Both the driver and operator licence holder failed to attend any interviews and failed to respond to any correspondence.

The Traffic Commissioner concluded that it was clear that the operator licence holder had been lending their licence to the driver so that they could continue their transport operations, despite the surrender of the licence of the company of which the driver had been a director.

Summing up

The Traffic Commissioner had considered the positive features in the case that the operator and licence holder had no prior adverse compliance history as an operator, and this was their first operator’s licence and their first Public Inquiry. DVSA roadside encounters had found the vehicle and trailer to be free of defects, and the operator also had demonstrated financial standing for the licence.

However, when the Traffic Commissioner balanced the negatives against this, they found the following features:

• Insufficient or no systems or procedures in place to comply with operator licence requirements, including the production of records and tachograph data, which prevented the DVSA traffic examiner from completing their investigations.
• Failure to comply with the inquiry process by the production of records requested in the call up letter in advance of the inquiry. The documents that were provided were mainly incomplete and in no apparent order.
• Failure to have an effective correspondence address and effective arrangements to receive correspondence sent to the nominated operating centres for the licence.
• The use of a transport manager in name only, who failed to exercise the effective and continuous management of the transport activities of the operator required of them.
• Upon the resignation of the transport manager, no period of grace was applied for.
• Failure to keep the Traffic Commissioner notified of material changes as required by the licence.

The Traffic Commissioner had considered the appropriate weight in findings and that the negatives were fundamental factors of the trust afforded to all operators granted an operator’s licence. Integrity and transparency are fundamental features of the trustworthiness required to be of good repute for the purposes of operator licensing. The promises of future improvements and actions given at the inquiry were given reduced weight as these were untested as well as belated.

The Traffic Commissioner found that the combination of negative features of this case significantly outweighed the positive factors and considered that the conduct was so serious that regulatory action against the licence must be considered.

The Traffic Commissioner finally determined that the operator has lost its good repute and its professional competence for the purposes of operator licensing and that the public interest in maintaining the integrity of the operator licensing system required the licence to be revoked.