If anyone drives for your business, even their own car on a short run to the wholesaler, you have a legal duty to check their driving licence. Here is what the law expects, how the free DVLA service works, and how often to repeat the check.
Key Takeaways
- Any employer whose staff drive on work business (vans, cars, motorbikes, or an employee's own vehicle used for work) has a duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
- The DVLA Share Driving Licence service is the free, authoritative way to check entitlement. The check code lasts 21 days; you need the code plus the last 8 digits of the driver's licence number.
- Best-practice frequency: at least once a year for low-risk drivers, every 6 months for drivers with points, every 3 months for HGV drivers and anyone close to a ban.
- Grey fleet (employee owns the car, uses it for work) is the same duty. If you pay mileage, you are on the hook.
- Letting an employee drive for work without a valid licence is a criminal offence, and usually voids the company motor policy for that journey.
Driving licence checks are the single cheapest compliance job a small fleet can do. Free to run, five minutes per driver, and they stop the worst kind of surprise: finding out after a crash that one of your drivers was banned three months ago and never told you.
This guide covers what the law actually requires, how to run a DVLA check properly, how often to repeat it, and what to do when a check flags a problem. It is written for the small business with 1 to 20 drivers, but the rules scale up; an O-licence operator with 200 HGVs follows the same basic process, just more often and with more paperwork.
If you drive for work, the companion guide on daily walkaround checks covers the matching vehicle-side obligation.
Do you have to check your drivers' licences?
Yes. If anyone drives on your business, in any vehicle, you have a legal duty to be sure they hold a valid, appropriate licence for what they are doing. That applies whether the vehicle is a company van, a hired car for the day, or the employee's own car driven to a client site. The duty sits with the employer, not the driver, and it does not go away just because you have never had an incident.
Two pieces of law create the obligation. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of employees. Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence to cause or permit someone to drive a vehicle they are not licensed to drive. Put together, the employer must take reasonable steps to know each driver is entitled, competent, and medically fit.
"Reasonable steps" is the bar courts use. In practice, a documented DVLA check at the point of hire and then on a set schedule is the floor; keeping no record at all is what goes badly wrong.
What the Health and Safety Executive expects
The HSE guidance on work-related road safety (INDG382) sets out what inspectors look for. The short version: a written driving-for-work policy, a documented check of licence and insurance before any journey, and a risk assessment covering the vehicle, the driver and the journey.
The HSE guidance is explicit that driving is a work activity. If an employee crashes on the motorway between two job sites, it is a workplace incident, and the usual questions apply: did the employer know the driver was fit to drive, was the vehicle roadworthy, was the journey plan reasonable. A documented licence-check trail is the evidence for the first question.
Failing that evidence test has bite. Under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, a company can be prosecuted for a fatal work-related road collision if senior management failures, including failing to verify driver competence, can be shown to have contributed. The fines sit at the level of turnover percentage, not fixed amounts.
How the DVLA Share Driving Licence service works
DVLA runs a free service for drivers to share their licence record with a third party. The driver generates a one-time check code, sends it to the employer, and the employer redeems it on gov.uk within 21 days. There is no paid "premium" version; anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a portal wrapper.
Here is the actual flow:
- The driver goes to gov.uk/view-driving-licence and signs in with their driving licence number, National Insurance number and postcode.
- The driver clicks "Share your licence information", generates a check code, and sends you the 8-character code plus the last 8 digits of their licence number.
- You go to gov.uk, open "Check someone else's driving licence information", enter the code and the last 8 digits.
- You get a read-only view of their entitlement, any endorsements (points, disqualifications), and the valid-to dates of each category.
- Save or print the screen as a PDF. That is your compliance record.
21 days. The check code was extended from 72 hours to 21 days in July 2015 specifically so employers and hire companies could run checks without the driver having to regenerate a new code every morning. Do not let anyone sell you a "real-time" upgrade; the 21-day window is generous enough for every small-fleet workflow.
The full legal basis for the service and the driver's right to share their record is set out in DVLA's own digital guidance, which is worth bookmarking. For larger fleets checking dozens of licences at once, DVLA also operates the Access to Driver Data (ADD) bulk service, which requires a registered agreement with the driver and is more work to set up than it is worth below about 30 drivers.
Grey fleet: the trap most small businesses fall into
Grey fleet is any vehicle owned by an employee but driven for work, typically their own car on a mileage-claim basis. Same duty of care, same licence obligation. If you pay an employee to drive 40 miles to a client meeting in their own car and they crash, the HSE investigation treats that journey exactly like one in a company vehicle.
Two specific risks kill small businesses on grey fleet. First, cover: many personal motor policies exclude "business use" by default, so if the employee has not told their insurer they drive for work, they are technically uninsured for that trip. Second, MOT: personal cars fall through the cracks. You might be running an immaculate service schedule on the company vans and have no idea the sales rep is out in an unsafely-tyred Corsa.
The fix is policy-led. A driving-for-work policy should require, in writing: (a) the employee provides a DVLA check code at hire and on each anniversary, (b) the employee's motor policy explicitly covers "business use" with the insurer, (c) the employee provides a recent MOT certificate when their vehicle is due, (d) the employee reports all new endorsements within 7 days. The true cost of running a van includes a grey-fleet comparison for businesses deciding whether to pool their own vans instead.
How often to re-check
A documented schedule matters more than the exact cadence. The risk-based frequencies most small fleets settle on:
Annual. The default for drivers on a full UK licence, no endorsements, low-mileage on normal roads. Book the next check on the anniversary of hire or at a fixed point in the year so none slip.
Every 6 months. Drivers with any endorsements on their record, drivers who have added a category in the last year, and drivers on motorway-heavy routes. Six months is the natural cadence because it gives you two swings at catching a points build-up before the driver hits 12 and is banned.
Every 3 months. HGV and PCV drivers, drivers with 6 or more points, drivers whose medical conditions require annual self-declaration, any driver near the totting threshold. Quarterly catches a short ban before it becomes an uninsured-driving incident.
Triggered. Whenever a driver self-reports an incident, endorsement, or medical change, run a fresh check within the week. And always re-check when hiring, even if the last employer "already did".
The bigger fleets sign up to DVLA's ADD bulk-check service because running 80 individual share-code checks every quarter is unmanageable; below 30 drivers, the free Share Driving Licence service is fine.
What to do when a check reveals a problem
A DVLA check can turn up five things that need action, and each has a specific response.
Wrong entitlement. The most common surprise: a driver on a car-only Category B licence is moving furniture in a 4-tonne Luton. Category C1 is required for vehicles 3.5 to 7.5 tonnes. Ground the driver until the category is added or a different driver takes the job. The 1997 cut-off matters: drivers who passed before 1 January 1997 often have "grandfather rights" to C1 on their Category B, but not always, so check the dates on the actual record.
Points on the record. Note the total. Below 6 is a watch item; 9 or more means that driver is one mistake away from a 6-month totting-up disqualification. Consider pairing them with lower-risk routes, at minimum.
A disqualification you did not know about. Immediate grounding, full stop. Keep a written note of when you learned and what you did; this is what protects the business if the DVSA or HSE asks.
An expired or expiring photocard. The photocard has to be renewed every 10 years; the entitlement itself does not expire (for most categories) until 70. Renewal is free at gov.uk if done on time, £14 if it lapses.
Medical self-declaration due. HGV and PCV drivers must self-declare medical fitness at 45 and every 5 years to 65, then annually. Car drivers only at 70. Most small fleets never hit this because they are car and van only, but HGV operators need it on the same cycle as their operator's licence renewal.
The unifying rule: document the action, even if the action is "spoke to driver, no change needed". When DVSA, HSE, or an insurer asks, "what did you do when you saw the points", the answer has to exist in writing.
What gets checked is not what gets shown
One gap in the DVLA service catches people out: the check shows what is on record at DVLA. It does not show what the driver has self-reported to DVLA and been refused, or what a medical professional has flagged but not yet notified. A driver whose GP has told them to stop driving because of a recent diagnosis might still show a clean record for weeks until the notification reaches DVLA.
The defence against that gap is a standing policy line: "you must inform your line manager within 24 hours of any medical diagnosis, medication change, or clinical advice that could affect your fitness to drive". Make signing that line part of the annual licence-check admin.
The bottom line
If you employ anyone who drives on company business, book an hour today. Run a licence check on every driver. Save each PDF with the date and the next-check date. Write a one-page driving-for-work policy that says who checks, when, and what triggers an immediate re-check. Repeat on a fixed schedule. Keep records for at least six years.
That is the floor. Above that, what separates a small fleet that passes an HSE investigation from one that does not is the same thing: can you produce the paperwork on the day. The complete fleet compliance guide goes wider on the other compliance streams, but licence checks are the one to start with. They cost nothing and they catch the most.
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Sources: View or share your driving licence information, GOV.UK · Driving licence check code extended from 72 hours to 21 days, GOV.UK · Driving without insurance, GOV.UK · Employers: driving and riding safely for work, HSE · The law and how it is regulated, HSE · Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, Section 2, legislation.gov.uk