Grey Fleet Management
What is the Grey Fleet?
Grey Fleet is a term that describes use of employee-owned vehicles that employees use for business travel.
The grey fleet can be a valuable solution to support business travel requirements. It is possible to use grey fleet ad hoc for short local routes and pay for mileage through the expenses process. This benefits the organisation as it does not need contracts or any other financial risk to run, just a payment based on actual use.
The grey fleet can also refer to those drivers who have opted to take a cash allowance and use their own vehicle for business use.
This area of the fleet is often poorly managed or even ignored by senior management. Ultimately, this can be costly to an organisation and bring additional risks relating to being on-road in a safe and compliant manner.
Luckily, we have an easy to use and low-cost solution for managing your grey fleet, which minimises the financial impact as well as increasing health and safety compliance as well as environmental sustainability.
Why Manage The Grey Fleet?
The Health and Safety legislation which governs the grey fleet is the same as that which applies to company run vehicles. As a business you must take steps to ensure that grey fleet vehicles are fit for purpose and legally compliant, whilst having supporting evidence should a serious incident be investigated.
Compliant vehicles need to be insured for business use, have a valid MOT certificate and pay the applicable road tax.
Official statistics estimate there are 14 million grey fleet vehicles on UK roads which undertake 12 billion miles per annum which makes the grey fleet a large spend area in some organisations. Grey fleet mileage is often re-imbursed using the HMRC approved mileage rates.
Grey fleet vehicles tend to be older in comparison with equivalent company vehicles with an average age of 8.2 years. These older vehicles can increase the impact of fleet emissions when measuring your organisations Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
Our Grey Fleet Solution
Our grey fleet service is designed to be simple for drivers and the organisation and includes:
- Vehicle verification via DVLA
- MOT verification and management
- Tax verification
- Insurance recording, inspection and management
- Grey fleet audit trail
- Document storage and reporting
- Driver licence checks (Note: this is a separate service and has an additional charge per check).
We follow a simple four step process:
Stakeholder Engagement
Engaging with fleet stakeholders is crucial to managing grey fleet use. We let the drivers know what the process will be, how their data is managed and the implementation timescales. A senior manager will be identified who has the overall responsibility within the organisation for grey fleet risk and we provide FAQ’s to support any queries the drivers may have.
Data Collection
We then collect the relevant information from your drivers. We provide drivers with a simple online form, that takes less than 2 minutes to complete. All of your data is recorded into our database, which is secure and GDPR compliant.
Data Processing
Once we have collected the driver data, we check that all vehicles are road legal through automated checks with relevant government database for areas such as MOT validity and road tax status. We review the vehicle insurance documentation to make sure it covers business use. If any of your drivers are non-compliant, we report this back immediately.
All documents are stored securely for future reference.
Ongoing Management and Reporting
After the initial checks we continue to manage the compliance of the grey fleet. We will prompt drivers when their vehicle insurance is going to expire, MOT and road tax due dates and validate this against DVLA records.
The outputs from the checking process are made available at all times and create a full audit trail should a serious incident occur.
We will provide you with a clear, concise view of who is driving what vehicle. We can also link the grey fleet mileage data to report the environmental impacts so organisations can accurately report Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Process Optimisation
We don’t stop at making sure your fleet is compliant. We will review the data and suggest ways of improving the grey fleet. We will also refine the grey fleet policy where required ensuring ongoing compliance to the latest legislation.
Why Use Our Solution?
Reduced Administration
We take care of all the grey fleet administration.
This gives you peace of mind and freeing up your time to concentrate on your core activities.
Audit Trail
All records are stored in a database which provides a full audit trail.
This proves that necessary steps have been taken to manage employees who use their own vehicle for business travel.
Automated Reminders
We regularly check vehicles to ensure they are up to date and compliant.
We remind drivers when important dates are due and alert you if road tax, MOT or insurance becomes overdue and non-compliant.
Detailed Reporting
You can access all the grey fleet data in a single platform.
We can even integrate your mileage data so you can accurately report on environmental emissions as part of annual reports or ESG requirements.
Frequently asked questions
Q. Is grey fleet right for our organisation?
A. For some journeys the grey fleet might be the perfect mode of transport. For longer or more frequent journeys a pool car, hire car or leased vehicle may be a more appropriate solution.
Q. How do you capture our data?
A. We send drivers a quick and easy web form to collect your grey fleet data. The form takes less than two minutes to fill in.
Q. How do you report on your findings?
A. Our data management system updates daily so you can view the state of your grey fleet at any point.
Q. How do you ensure compliance?
A. We check the data your employees give us against DVLA records. confirming the status MOTs and road tax with a visual inspection of insurance documents. We flag up non-compliance immediately. Drivers will also receive reminders when key dates are due.
Q. How is the data stored?
A. Our system is cloud based ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and GDPR compliant.
Q. What if an employee uses multiple vehicles?
A. That is absolutely fine. We ask employees to submit an additional form.
Q. How do In know if a vehicle is insured?
A. To check if a vehicle is insured you can use the Ask Mid service which will provide you with the relevant details.
Q. How do I know if a vehicle is taxed?
A. To check if a vehicle is taxed you can use the government vehicle enquiry service which will provide you with the relevant details.
Q. How do I know if a vehicle is taxed?
A. To check if a vehicle is taxed you can use the government vehicle enquiry service which will provide you with the relevant details.
Q. How much vehicle excise duty should I be paying?
A. To checkthe appropriate vehicle excise duty rate you can use the government tax information service which will provide you with the relevant details.