Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety. Today we are joined by Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, DVSA Enforcement Policy Specialist Mark Horton. For those who work in the transport sector, the DVSA are absolutely central to our industry. From car and HGV tests to roadside enforcement, today we look to dig deeper into their role of ensuring drivers, vehicles and operators are safe out on our roads.
Thank you for joining us, Mark. Whilst I'll doubt there's many, but for those listeners who may not understand the role of the DVSA, can you firstly give us an overview of the key responsibilities and the scope of your organisation? Yes, well, first of all thanks for inviting me and giving me this opportunity. So DVSA, we keep changing our names, but that's our current name, are responsible for testing, really.
Our main role is, we do vehicle testing, so that's commercial vehicles and we also have a role with sort of private vehicles, cars, et cetera. We also do driver testing, so that's, we oversee the theory test, but we actually undertake the driving test and then on top of that, we have a enforcement role.
So the enforcement role covers both commercial vehicles, so you'll see us at the side of the road, checking vehicles, PSVs, etc. and to a lesser extent we're involved in checking light goods vehicles as well. We also do some enforcement around driving examiners and also MOT testing stations. So they're our sort of key roles. Thank you.
Some of our listeners will have crossed paths with you, but for those in the industry that haven't, can you tell us about your background and how you became to be the enforcement policy manager? I joined DVSA or Vehicle Inspectorate as it was back in 1997, so I've been in the organisation quite a long time now.
Prior to that, I undertook various different roles, but not actually related to transport, so transport was quite new when I joined the Vehicle Inspectorate back then and I came in as an Enforcement Officer, so I was one of the guys at the side of the road checking vehicles. Did that for a number of years and then I moved into some various managerial roles.
So I was managing some of the teams and also undertaking project work and then more recently, about 10 years or so, I joined the Enforcement Policy Team.
So I run the team there that's I guess our responsibility is trying to make sense of legislation, trying to have pragmatic instructions for our examiners at the side of the road and also looking at not placing too much of a burden on the industry, making sure any enforcement action we take is in the public interest, so yeah, been doing that for a number of years now. Still enjoy the job, spend a lot of time working with external stakeholders as well.
So whilst I might not have that first hand experience of working in transport, we do, we spend a lot of time talking to stakeholders, getting them involved in the work that we do to make sure that we're not just making stuff up that's not going to work in the real world, so yeah, that's me. That's amazing. Let's move on to roadside enforcement, if we can. We can see the information shared across your platforms, the type of scenarios you're faced with on daily roadside checks.
What actions do you take in these situations? The way we enforce is probably, you could split it up into two main ways. So we do the roadside enforcement, so that's the things that you see, that's the guys on the side of the road, we have our own stopping vehicle, so we pull vehicles in and we target using various different mechanisms.
So, if we're pulling somebody in, there's generally a good reason for us stopping that vehicle because we do tend to concentrate on the vehicles and the operators where we expect there to be a problem. We'll undertake checks of the vehicle, we'll undertake a roadworthiness check, so we're looking at the vehicle to make sure there's no obvious defects on it that's going to affect its ability to operate safely on the roads and we're also looking at the driver.
So we're looking to make sure that the driver's appropriately rested, we've got lots of driver's house rules in the UK, making sure they're following those and making sure that the operator's got all the appropriate documentation to operate on the road. So we're looking at sort of fair competition and a level playing field. If we find any problems with the vehicle, we're going to issue a prohibition, primarily.
So that's there to stop the vehicle from going anywhere until such time as, whatever, the reason for the prohibition has been repaired. So if there's a defeat then we're going to expect them to rectify the defect, or if the driver needs a rest, we're going to basically impose a rest on him until he's safe to go back on the road. So that's mostly the stuff for the side of the road.
We do advertise a lot of what we do on social media, so there's various Twitter feeds which we use to highlight some of this work. Yeah, that's interesting. It's always worthwhile for anybody who wants to see the sort of problems that we do identify at the side of the road, we tend to show the bad and the very graphically bad rather than the minor stuff. But, it's good to get that message out there so people know what we're coming up against.
Then aside from the roadside work, we also Do a lot of what we call follow up. So it's where we go in and we see the operator, we sit down with them and we'll have a look at all their systems. So this is all the management systems that they've got in place to manage their business. We sort of take the view that if we find a problem at the side of the road in one area, then there's a possibility that there might be other problems that they've got.
So we'll go in there, we'll sit down with the operator and we'll look through their systems, make sure that they're compliant and where we can we'll help them, we'll help them become more compliant. Of course, if there are lots of serious problems, then we do have to take or look at taking action against the operator. It may well be that we put them in front of the traffic commissioner.
So the traffic commissioner sort of oversees the transport industry and has various powers to take action, again to sort of ensure that they are encouraged to be compliant, I suppose, best way of putting it. In most serious cases, we'll prosecute, you know, we will take operators to court, we'll take drivers to court, we also issue fixed penalties as well at the side of the road. so there's quite a lot of options open to us in dealing with this.
We don't jump straight to taking enforcement action. We do consider more sort of educational advisory routes because we don't want to just be the bad guys all the time. So it's not just a case of taking the most sort of robust action, but you know, where necessary, we do Weighing up the severity of the situation. Clearly, load security continues to be a high priority for the DVSA. How fast would you say the non-compliance is in this particular area?
And maybe you can highlight a recent case which has had an impact of the work on the DVSA? I'd like to highlight two cases. Go on. Yeah, of course. They're both from very different sectors within the transport industry and I think they both highlight different things. I think that the message that they put across is important.
So the first incident involved a chap called Stephen Oscroft and Stephen, he was involved in an incident in July 2020 and he was out with his family driving in North Nottinghamshire on a day out and a tipper vehicle was coming in the opposite direction and a lump of concrete fell off the back of the tipper, so this tipper was removing demolition waste from a site, the concrete fell off the back of the vehicle and went straight through the windscreen of Stephen's
vehicle and killed Stephen in front of his daughter and his grandchildren. Obviously a very unfortunate incident and there was an investigation as you would expect after that. The police weren't able to take any prosecution action against anybody because they couldn't prove beyond reasonable doubt where this lump of concrete has come from.
But it did end up in a coroner's court and the coroner at the time and this was May 21, I think, when the actual hearing took place and the outcome of that was that the coroner approached DVSA and also the Health and Safety Executive, because we work very closely with the Health and Safety Executive, approached us and asked us what we were going to do to prevent similar incidents happening in the future and this is called a Report On Preventing Future Deaths and it
happens quite a lot in coroner's court. So we were then obliged to respond to this request and say what we were going to do and that was one of the catalysts for some of the changes that DVSA have made to the way we enforce load security and also the guidance that we've recently written.
So again, that was very tragic and then more recently, a young chap called Harry Dennis, was involved in an accident in December 22, just before Christmas and this case was only very recently in court at the end of 23, it was in November and, Harry was in a passenger vehicle and going the opposite direction was a light goods vehicle with scaffolding on it and one of the scaffolding parts, the scaffolding had swung out because there was no load security whatsoever on this vehicle and
you can imagine what happened when the scaffolding hit the vehicle coming in the other direction and Harry was an 11 year old young kid and he was very sporty, obviously loved by all his family and he died in hospital a few days later, they weren't able to save his life and again, it was a tragic incident and there was an investigation there, the driver was actually sentenced to four years in prison for death by dangerous driving and he got quite a serious driving ban as well, and
some of the findings that came out of that was the fact that the driver would have known about this because, first of all the parts of the scaffolding that swung out, he could see through his wing mirror, so it would have been obvious to him.
But also the findings were that, and probably through his own admittance as well, that he didn't secure his load, he'd been doing this for a number of years, just relying on the weight of the load itself to keep it secure and again, a tragic incident and in both these cases, these were foreseeable, had the drivers taken more time before these vehicles went on the road.
Ten, fifteen minutes, all it takes, two people, obviously one's of, one's of end up losing their lives and then the knock on effect on their family, also the family of the drivers of these vehicles, because you know, it's awful for them. So, yeah, absolutely tragic.
and unfortunately these happen on a fairly regular basis, they're just two cases that I'm highlighting, but as I say, I work with Health and Safety Executive and they will tell you that this is a weekly occurrence where somebody is losing their life because of poor practice in a lot of cases. If we can for a moment talk about the consequences of this type of non compliance. You've mentioned there that chap got four years, but what are the other consequences of unsecure loads?
I assume it's not just the killed and seriously injured figures, there's no doubt in my mind that there's a whole host of other impacts, can you explain with us what they are? Yeah, I mean, you're right.
I mean, I think it's, obviously we do tend to emphasise the dramatic and the tragic, but I think in a lot of cases and anybody who drives around on the motorway network will hear on the news there's been an incident, there's a goods vehicle shed its load and there's delays, even on the way down today, there was an incident where a load had been shed which caused delays, and I think that is one of the main things that, so, delays that are caused on the network and the debris on
the motorway that is a result of these incidents and of course somebody's then got to get out and clear up that mess. I think it's probably one of the most dangerous places to be. They always used to say that being on the hard shoulder was the most dangerous place on the motorway, but we haven't got hard shoulders anymore, so I think they're getting even more dangerous so, and Highways England are responsible for doing that, so that's a big effect on them.
But of course, if you're stuck in a delay, if you're trying to deliver a load, then you're not going to meet your delivery slot, there's going to be people failing to go to meetings or hospital appointments and so there's a big impact on the economy across the board.
From a DVSA point of view, where goods vehicles are involved in this, because they're not securing the loads properly, then obviously they're going to be of interest to us, so they're more likely to be targeted by us, because we do tend to target based on behavior and what we experience, our interaction with operators and drivers, so it does have an effect on that and of course, if you're going to be pulled over more by DVSA, then that's going to make it harder for you in the
future, because we're going to be delaying you a lot more, so it's damaging to their reputation, potentially to their business, there's a cost, of course, for that. Might make it harder to recruit drivers as well, you know, you don't want to work for an operator that's always been pulled over by the DVSA because, you know, it's not good for you either. So yeah, there's lots of different knock on effects, not just the obvious, it's everything else that goes on in the background.
Many already understand that human error causes most collisions. I'm led to believe it's actually around 98%. We know that the DVSA makes significant investment into making our road safer, would you say there has been a standout project or initiative that has had the biggest impact on improving compliance? It's been very difficult to just pick on one, one initiative.
So I'm going to tell you about a few initiatives that we've been involved in and I've been involved in, some of these as well over the years and in this role we say 98% down to error really, things that are avoidable, and that's a, you know, that's always a concern. I think we always say that 85% of the defects that we find are the side of the road could have been spotted by the driver before they set off on their journey. So that's a lot of the problems that we find are extremely avoidable.
As far as initiatives go, I'll start with load security because that's something that I've been involved in. So DVSA changed its approach to load security going back now 10 years or so, where previously we'd been quite reactive.
We dealt with them where we came across them, but we didn't go out there talking to drivers and operators and we didn't really have a strategy as such around that, but we changed that as is often the case with these things because of incidents that were happening and people losing their lives.
So we started working with the health and safety executive and we came up with a strategy on the best way of tackling low security and that was very much about a pragmatic approach, using advice where necessary, but having this strategy set out very clearly for people, and also working with industry to deliver guidance that was more helpful, because while there is a lot of guidance out there, it does tend to be quite technical in nature and actually, that's probably
not what people need, what people need is something that they can pick up and read, understand and then implement that. So we provided that, we actually won an award, Prince Michael of Kent International Road Safety Award for the work that we did there. So that was a good recognition of what we did. But then looking at some other things, so we introduced something which we call the Operator Compliance Risk Score. This is something that we use to target based on our interaction with operators.
So if that interaction is positive, then they get a positive score, if we find problems, then that has a negative impact.
I'm simplifying this hugely for the sake of time, but because of this, an operator will have a score, it'll be a red, amber or green, obviously we'll target the red and we'll leave the green alone and that was introduced a number of years ago, and one of the unintended consequences of that was that because anybody can access an operator's OCRS score, and being able to access that, a customer can look at an operator and decide whether or not they want to give
them their business, because if they're a red operator, they're far more likely to get stopped by DVSA for a start and they've probably got higher insurance premiums and there's other issues there. So that had a good knock on effect to encourage operators to be compliant and then as an extension of that, we introduced something called Earn Recognition.
So Earn Recognition is for the very best operators that we have in the UK and if you're an Earn Recognition operator, DVSA pretty much leave you alone. We rely on you to monitor your own compliance and you provide us with assurances that's what you've done and we won't touch you. The only time we'll do that is if we see your vehicle go past and there's a wheel missing, that sort of thing.
So generally speaking, we leave you alone, let you get on with your business and also what that does, it allows our resource to be freed up to deal with the non compliant, because again, we're leaving the compliant alone. Another initiative that happened a few years ago now was called the Small Trailer Initiative and this again was a... There's an unfortunate incident where a young boy called Fred Hussey was killed by a runaway trailer.
So it was a light trailer being carried by, being pulled by a car and because of some successful lobbying and MPs being involved in that, additional funding was made available to DVSA so that we could go out there and start looking at light trailers, caravans, things that we wouldn't normally look at and that had quite a big impact, particularly in the region where this young chap was involved in the accident and then above and beyond that, we recently have signed up to what
we call NAS, and that's the AMPR and enforcement cameras around the UK, we now have access to that, I think somewhere in the region of 12, 000 cameras, and having access to that enables us to be much more targeted in our approach. So we tend to know where vehicles are on the network.
so if we have targets, we can make sure that we're in the right place at the right time and again, it's a huge saving and resource because whilst we have lots of check sites around the country, everybody knows where our check sites are, so it can be quite easy to avoid them. We do have, obviously mobile capability as well, but having access to these cameras has been a real game changer for us, in targeting the non compliant. Yeah, I bet.
You just mentioned the development of the Safety Code of Practice, which I know you've been personally instrumental on. So I just want to talk about that a little bit more. I know you mentioned it was updated last year. How do you think the logistics sector has responded and adapted this into practices? Could more still be done?
I think there's always more that could be done, I think what one of the problems the DVSA has in monitoring compliance with something like load security is the fact that we check a very small proportion of the traffic that's out there and we try, we are as targeted and we try and be as targeted as we can so we know we're checking the right vehicles but there's still a lot that we don't check so sometimes it's very difficult to get a handle on how compliant industry is.
One of the other things we're acutely aware of is that when we do stop vehicles, because of insecure loads, nearly 50 percent of all those incidents are because the load hasn't been secured at all. So, this isn't marginal things where somebody's tried to do the best they can do. This is people not bothering at all, hiding behind curtains and things like that, so we know there is a problem and this is why we wrote the original guidance and then we've rewritten all the existing guidance.
So there's quite a lot out there and we've tried to bring it all into one place and write it in a way that's much more accessible, people easier to understand because we publish this on the government website, it has to be written in a certain way that makes it very accessible. So for people where English isn't the main language, et cetera so, and hopefully that's as a benefit and it makes it more helpful.
Probably one of the biggest compliments we got was this, somebody said from a trade organisation that people are actually reading it now. So, we don't get much praise in enforcement anyway, but, actually the fact that it was out there and we, did quite a good publicity campaign prior to it being released and also because we spent a lot of time talking to stakeholders. So when it came out, it did cause quite a stir.
Judging by the amount of emails that we got at the time and certainly continue to get about that and I think it came as a surprise to some people that there was guidance out there and also that they should be securing the load and whilst there had been guidance knocking around since the early 70s, I think it had sort of been, you know, disappeared into the mist sometimes and so us redoing that and doing that publicity and publishing it out and, you know, it has made a big
difference, people are looking at it and people are challenging us as well, they're challenging the instructions and the guidance that we've given and we work with them, we look at information that they provide and if what they're suggesting as a change is appropriate, then we do that, you know, we don't take everything on board, you know, we couldn't do that, but we do listen to them and hopefully the guidance does evolve.
We're going to be about to release a new version the next couple of months, which is taking on board all the feedback we've had from when we released it last year.
So it's going to evolve, it's going to improve and of course, we gather more data through our encounters, so we know what's happening, we know what we're finding, we know where the biggest problems are so we can place the emphasis in the right areas and that's not just with the guidance, that's with the way that we enforce, the way we train our examiners, who we interact with in the business.
So if we are training our examiners, we will get external operators, manufacturers involved so that they can explain to our examiners what the problems that they face. So it's getting a better understanding of those issues that gives them more of a rounded approach to enforcement. So I think the message is, yes, compliance could be better. We do everything that we can to drive that compliance, you know, we don't just sort of go with a big stick, we do help as much as we can.
I do quite a few talking events and conferences where we'll talk about these things and we'll identify what the problems are, we'll tailor that to the audience and we do get a lot of requests to do that, which I see only as a positive thing so yeah. If we can for a second just edge over to a more proactive approach to risk and talk around that and that's risk assessments.
Not only do they reduce the chance of incidents occurring, but also demonstrate to employees and external bodies such as the DVSA that companies have taken ample steps to protect people from harm. Do you think adequate risk assessments take place in the transport industry? Increasingly, we do place emphasis on having effective risk assessments in a business to control those risks.
It's also a legal requirement of course, depending on the size of the business and the law says something along the lines of employees must protect both their employees and anybody else who could be work, from their work activities. So it is an extremely important part of managing that and effective risk assessments are key to controlling those risks and the transport sector is known to be a fairly dangerous sector to work in.
Not just out when they're out on the road, but it's the loading and unloading of vehicles that causes a lot of problems for the Health and Safety Executive. Where people are working at high, there's manual handling, so there's lots of risks associated with that and of course, goods vehicles are big and they cause a lot of damage.
So it's extremely important that when operators are looking at those risks, they look at all the risks and it's not just about coming up with a risk assessment, it's about what you do with that risk assessment. So obviously it has to be effective, but it's the way then drives the way that business then operates. So in the latest version of the load security guidance, we've added a whole section.
about risk assessments because what we've found is that a lot of operators have said to us well I know the guidance says we have to do one particular thing but actually we think we can do it better than that or we think there's a another way of doing that and we've said to them well okay that's fine if that's what you want to do, but show us your risk assessment, you know, demonstrate to us that you have considered all the problems that are associated with what you're deciding to
do with the load that you're carrying, you know, what are you looking at? Are you looking at the roads that you go on? Are you considering the experience of the people that are involved in that transport train? You know, are you training your drivers and all these different things that can help to make a risk assessment effective? So we are placing more emphasis on that.
There was a recent case actually, which illustrates quite well, where one of the traffic commissioners, Miles Dorrington, he revoked a license from an operator because of their approach to risk assessment. So whilst they've got risk assessments in place, they hadn't actually done anything with the risk assessment.
So they'd gone to the trouble of looking at the risk, writing the documents and so on, but they hadn't actually acted on those risk assessments and I think that's the key thing here, isn't it? It's not just about doing the risk assessment, it's what that then drives you to do to make sure that your business is a safe place, safe environment for drivers and anybody else that interacts with that business. Absolutely.
We've discussed some serious issues today and I'm sure our listeners will have much to take away from this. Our final question before we draw to a close is more about looking into the near future. How would you see the introduction of alternatively fueled vehicles such as electric gas and hydrogen affecting the way that the DVSA enforces law? What challenges do you expect to encounter over the next few years?
So I'm going to do that thing that politicians do and I'm going to answer a different question, because I think that question should probably be about autonomous vehicles because as we move forward, connected and autonomous vehicles are going to be probably the biggest change in the transport industry in the UK.
So we're seeing this now with private cars, anybody who's got a modern car will have driver assistance systems on there and I've got a hire car today and it won't let me drive out of the lane I'm in, very frustrating, but they're there for a reason, so the government's committed to autonomous vehicles in the future and the autonomous vehicle bill is currently being written and what that does it sets out what the legislation will say in the future that's going to
govern how we integrate these vehicles into the UK and also that's going to set out how we're going to enforce that. We're very much involved in this at the moment we have a project team that is, they're just devoted to looking at autonomous vehicles. We're involved in a lot of the trials that are ongoing.
For example, there's one called CAV4th, which is on the 4th Road Bridge near Edinburgh and we're working with the local council and the manufacturers of these vehicles there and we've got vehicles going across that bridge without drivers and there's lots of other trials around the UK, mostly they're not on the private, they're not on the main roads, they're sort of in industrial estates, airports and places like that.
But this is going to be the biggest impact on traffic in the UK moving forward. There's a lot of challenges for this country, not least the fact that our roads were very old, very bendy, so whilst it probably worked quite well on motorways, the challenge is how you then integrate that into rural areas and towns and so on. So that's a big thing and that's, it might be a few years off, but the thinking's there, the technology's in place, it's just how we start integrating that.
We're going on to alternative for fuel vehicles, so we'll answer your question. I think from our point of view, they don't make a great deal of difference to what we will do. I mean, we train our examiners there might be things they don't want to touch when they're looking at an electric but other than that, these vehicles still need brakes, they still need, you know, tires and everything else, so essentially enforcement remains the same.
I think there's challenges around, certainly for larger commercial vehicles, electrically powered ones, because batteries take up a lot of space. They eat into carrying capacity and they're obviously very heavy, so there's challenges there. There are some around, but we're not seeing many on the road. I think if, you're doing local runs, then that's fine. But anything, any like long haulage is a real challenge.
I think where we are seeing a lot more and where they are more viable is, like commercial vehicles, you can get the range out and the vehicles aren't as heavy.
and the recently been some consultation that the government's undertaken looking at how we can increase uptake of these vehicles, so it's looking like at some point in the very near future legislation is going to change that will allow them to operate at slightly higher weights, but without attracting all the additional requirements that you might associate with slightly heavier vehicles and this is recognising the fact that battery's weigh way more, light goods vehicles
are notoriously overloaded anyway, so, and that's a definite challenge that we have at DVSA dealing with that. But by allowing them that increased weight limit, it does make them a much more viable option to use on their own and of course we want to get people away from fossil fuels anyway, so, anything that we can do, whether that's the DFT or DVSA, can only be a good thing there, so, you know. On behalf of all of us, Mark, thank you so much for joining us today.
What an interesting episode that was, great for you, our listeners, to have a chance to hear direct from the DVSA. Mark has left us with standout takeaways such as the cost to the economy for non compliant load security, but more importantly the cost to lives. To refresh your business on the safety code of practice for load security, please head to gov.uk So that was our twelfth episode and it brings our first season of Driven By Excellence to a close.
We'd like to take the opportunity to thank our listeners for your time investment and most importantly for our expert guests. After a short break, we will be back with season two very soon, so stay tuned. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Driven by Excellence. We hope you enjoyed listening, and if you did, please don't forget to click that follow button, leave us a review, or share this episode with a colleague.
For more information and to keep up to date with industry news, head to our website pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk