Transport Manager Monthly Compliance Checklist: What Should You Be Checking?

Operator licence

Start with the licence. The goods vehicle operator licensing guide (opens in a new tab) sets out what a heavy goods licence authorises: the type, the maximum number of vehicles, the trailers authorised, the operating centres, and any conditions or undertakings. If the yard no longer matches that authority, this is the review that should catch it.

A specified vehicle must not be used until its identity disc is displayed: on a windscreen, the near side, near the lower edge, facing forwards. Lost or stolen discs are reported in writing. Relevant changes — including the transport manager, an operating centre, the correspondence address and convictions — must be notified within 28 days. Some changes need a new licence. Leaving a hired vehicle on the licence can affect repute.

A standard licence needs a professionally competent transport manager who manages the operation continuously and effectively. Restricted licences are a different route. GOV.UK’s transport manager pages (opens in a new tab) explain the qualification. Keep the certificate, and any CPD a traffic commissioner may ask for, with the licence file.

Driver licences and qualifications

The licensing guide puts driving licences in the transport manager’s general responsibilities. Drivers need the right entitlement for the vehicle. Vocational drivers need a valid Driver CPC card. Checks should be regular — the guide says usually every 3 months. How often to check an HGV or PSV driving licence explains that interval for goods and passenger drivers.

A new starter, an agency driver or a driver collecting points is a higher risk. DVSA’s earned recognition standards (opens in a new tab) expect a three-month check, more often where the risk is higher, including 6 or more points, and a way for drivers to report offences or a lost category. Earned recognition is voluntary. The same three-month rhythm is what the licensing guide describes. DVLA will not release a record without the driver’s permission. Check a driving licence (opens in a new tab) explains check codes. Keep the result, the date and what you did.

Driver CPC is separate from the driving licence and from the transport manager CPC. Most professional lorry and bus drivers keep it with 35 hours every 5 years. Exemptions are on GOV.UK (opens in a new tab). The tachograph card is neither a licence nor CPC. ADR applies only where the work includes dangerous goods.

Tachograph downloads

Where drivers’ hours rules apply, the tachograph is the record of driving, other work, availability and rest. GOV.UK’s tachograph rules (opens in a new tab) say operators must download vehicle-unit data at least every 90 days and driver-card data at least every 28 days, and analyse it. The operator licensing guide (opens in a new tab) says the same, where appropriate.

Twenty-eight days is shorter than a month, so a card read early in the month can be overdue before you meet again. Name every gap: holiday, vehicle off road, card in another cab, or a file that never uploaded. The operator keeps the download.

Drivers’ hours and infringements

Downloading the file is the start. The licensing guide expects drivers to follow the hours rules, take the required breaks and rest, and hand records back. The limits themselves are on GOV.UK. This article does not shorten them. The monthly job is to ask what was done about driving-time, rest and break infringements, manual entries, missing activity, and the same infringement appearing again.

A report nobody acts on is not management. If the same insufficient-rest infringement appears next month, the record you want is the conversation, the schedule change or the training. Tell the driver. Where your process asks for an acknowledgement, keep it with the file.

Daily walkaround checks

The Guide to Maintaining Roadworthiness (opens in a new tab) expects a walkaround before a vehicle is first used that day. HGV daily walkaround checks covers what to inspect, nil defects and how long to keep the record. The licensing guide expects the transport manager to take an unroadworthy vehicle out of service.

The monthly question is whether checks exist for the days the vehicle worked. Sample them. Look for missing days, checks that are implausibly short, a long run of nil defects, trailer checks only on days a trailer was pulled, photos or a clear description, the driver’s identity, and a defect that nobody assessed.

Defect reports that record a fault and the rectification must be kept for at least 15 months, including electronic reports. The guide recommends keeping nil-defect reports for at least 3 months, as evidence the check was done. Those are different periods.

Defects and vehicles off road

A defect report is only half the record. The Guide to Maintaining Roadworthiness expects the assessment, the rectification and the person who repaired it to sit with the report. That includes faults from the walkaround, from a safety inspection, and from the roadside. A vehicle with a safety-critical defect should stay out of service until it is repaired.

Sort the open list first. An open safety-critical defect on a vehicle that has worked since is the finding that matters. Then look for the lamp, spray suppression or coupling that comes back on the same asset. Vehicles off road need a return-to-service record: the repair, who released the vehicle, and the defect closed against that asset. A workshop job card does not replace your copy.

PMI and safety inspections

A safety inspection is not the daily walkaround and not the annual test. There is no single interval for every lorry: you set it, declare it and keep to it. It has to cover at least the annual-test items, be done by someone competent, and record the result. The licensing guide expects inspections, including brake tests, inside the ISO weeks you notified, with a planner at least 6 months ahead. You keep the record even when a contractor does the work. HGV PMI inspections is the longer guide.

Brake testing and calibration

Every safety inspection needs a brake performance assessment: a roller test, a suitable electronic system, or a decelerometer with temperature readings. A laden roller test can be up to 14 days before the inspection if the inspector has the report. Without an electronic system, expect at least four laden tests a year, which can include the annual test, and a risk assessment if a laden test is missed. An annual-test pass does not replace the tests in between. See brake test records. Annual test dates are on GOV.UK (opens in a new tab). Tachograph calibration (opens in a new tab) is separate: analogue units are inspected every 2 years and recalibrated every 6. Digital and smart units are recalibrated every 2 years, and also after repair, a registration change, UTC time more than 20 minutes out, or a tyre-size change.

Vehicle and trailer expiry dates

A monthly review that only asks “what expired this month?” is already late. The transport manager’s question is what will expire next month, and the month after, while there is still time to book a test, a calibration or a service.

Work through the dates you actually rely on:

• Annual test for vehicles and trailers in possession (MOT for lorries, buses and trailers (opens in a new tab)), and vehicle tax (GOV.UK (opens in a new tab)). Tax is not a roadworthiness test, but an untaxed vehicle should not leave.
• The next PMI, against the interval you declared.
• Brake performance, tachograph calibration, and any service that falls sooner than the inspection.
• Insurance, where you record it, plus tail-lift, speed-limiter or ADR dates where the vehicle needs them.

Maintenance records

The licensing guide says vehicle maintenance records must be kept for at least 15 months, and produced if a traffic commissioner asks. What records a transport manager should keep separates that duty from the shorter nil-defect recommendation.

Retention is not the same as being able to find the sheet. Pick three vehicles and one trailer and try to pull the last inspection, its brake report, the defects and repairs, the annual test, and the calibration certificate where a tachograph is fitted. If you have to ring the workshop, the record is not yet yours. Electronic reports count, and they still have to name the vehicle, the date, the defect and who reported it.

Working time and drivers’ hours records

Drivers’ hours limit driving, breaks and rest. Working time is a separate limit on the whole working day, including work that is not driving. A driver can be inside one and outside the other. A tachograph printout is not, by itself, a complete working-time record.

The licensing guide tells transport managers to keep drivers’ hours records for at least 12 months, and working time records for at least 24 months. GOV.UK’s working time annex (opens in a new tab) sets out the average week, the maximum week, night work and what counts as working time, including work for another employer. This article does not compress those rules. Agency drivers belong in the same records on the days they drive for you.

Each month, look for missing days, working time that ignores yard work or another employer, and night work. Deleting a file after 12 months can meet the drivers’ hours duty and still fail the 24-month working-time duty.

Look for trends, not only overdue items

Overdue dates find the calibration that expired on Tuesday. They do not show that the same failure is happening every month. Look across the samples.

• Driver A repeats an insufficient-rest infringement. Each week was “dealt with”. The schedule was not.
• Vehicle B reports a lighting defect most weeks. The repair is not lasting, or the check is only looking at lamps.
• Vehicle C leaves every PMI with a long defect list. The interval may be too long, or the daily check is missing what the inspector finds.
• Driver B’s walkaround is always much shorter than everyone else on the same vehicle. Short can mean familiar. It can also mean the list was accepted, not walked.
• Depot A reports far fewer defects than depot B on similar work. The quiet depot is not automatically the better one.
• The maintenance provider returns paperwork two weeks after the vehicle is back in service. You still cannot show the record.

Give the pattern an owner, a date, and something that will be different next month. “Monitor” is not an action. If the pattern is still there, the action was not enough.

Monthly compliance checklist

Use this as the agenda. Tick a line only when you have seen the evidence. If it does not apply, mark it and say why.

Could you produce your compliance records today?

Imagine the request arrives this afternoon. DVSA, or a traffic commissioner, asks you to show daily checks, defects, repairs, vehicles off road, the return to service, PMI sheets, brake tests, tachograph downloads, drivers’ hours, infringements and what you did about them, driver licence checks, qualifications, and the actions the transport manager took. How to prepare for a DVSA visit is that list.

If that evidence is split across a cabinet, a spreadsheet, a phone, a workshop WhatsApp group and two systems that do not share a vehicle, the afternoon is a search. The monthly checklist is the rehearsal. A line you cannot evidence today is the line to fix.

Bring your fleet compliance together with FleetPro UK

FleetPro does not replace the transport manager. It gives you one system for the work this checklist covers, so you can see what needs attention, what has been done, and where the evidence is stored.

Walkarounds, defects and VOR share a vehicle record. PMI, MOT, tax and calibration dates sit on the fleet. Where the package includes them, tachograph analysis and DVLA licence checks sit on the same driver. Compliance and Complete add the hub, the year planner and documents. Workshop is separate, and it uses the operator’s vehicle rather than a copy. Pricing shows Checks, Core, Compliance, Complete, and the tachograph, licence-check and workshop options. FleetPro does not file a licence variation, and it does not sign the record off for you.

Open a complimentary trial, invite yourself as an administrator, and look at the package that fits. No card is taken. When the trial ends, features lock until you speak with us. Start at organisation setup.