Travis Perkins appoints Licence Check for all fleet compliance needs

Travis Perkins has chosen DAVIS (Driver and Vehicle Information Solution) from Licence Check for all fleet compliance requirements across its 4,000-strong vehicle fleet.

Travis Perkins employs 16,000 people across more than 2,000 stores, branches and sites across the country, with major subsidiaries such as Travis Perkins Builders’ Merchants, Toolstation, Keyline, BSS and CCF.

The £5 billion turnover Group operates a widely varied mixed fleet of 1,800 heavy goods vehicles, 700 light commercials and 1,500 company cars, plus a further 800 grey fleet cars.

Until September last year, the Group was using its incumbent fleet management provider to meet its complex licence checking and fleet compliance requirements, carrying out licence checks across the fleet every six months, depending on the risk profile of the driver.

However, under the company’s operating licence it has very strong compliance and duty of care protocols to meet and felt a specialised provider would be more suited to helping meet that standard.

Since switching to DAVIS, Travis Perkins has been able to increase the frequency of licence checks for all its drivers so that now the platform checks 5,500 drivers’ licences every month, rather than every six.

Fleet systems manager, Jon Lowe, who heads up a 14-strong fleet administration and compliance team with compliance reporting responsibilities for the company’s 5,500 authorised drivers, said: “With six monthly checks, while we would rely on our drivers to tell us if they have an incident or incur penalties on their licence, there was always a chance, with the time lag, that some would slip through the cracks, creating compliance issues.

“Now, by increasing the frequency of checks through DAVIS, we are able to have a more complete picture of our drivers, ensure that we are legally compliant and can more readily identify which drivers are high or low risk,” he said.

DAVIS also allows Travis Perkins to effectively manage the risk associated with its 800 grey fleet drivers by carrying out regular licence checks and verifying that grey fleet vehicles have the requisite business insurance, a current MOT, are fit for purpose and regularly serviced.

Terry Hiles, general manager at Licence Check, said: “Thanks to DAVIS, Travis Perkins is managing a very complex fleet risk and compliance picture across a huge and varied fleet, and with many thousands of drivers, very effectively, efficiently and in a most impressive manner.

“We look forward to a very long and mutually beneficial business relationship.”

Licence Check carried out more than 74,000 licence checks in October – a record number for a single month, and up 31% compared with the same month last year.