Arnold Clark Automobiles is reporting huge savings in time and administrative effort by using Glasgow-based DriverCheck, part of the Ebbon Group, to handle licence checking and legal compliance for over 10,000 drivers. The retailer used to handle requirements internally using the DVLA’s licence check facility, but found this was becoming impractical from a sheer scale, effort and time point of view.
Arnold Clark operates 193 dealerships across the country, as well as 160 service centres, 17 accident repair centres and 14 parts centres. It handles sales of around 300,000 vehicles per annum and turnover in 2021 was £4.7bn.
There is also a growing logistics fleet for moving new and used vehicles around the country, as the business looks to build its digital Click and Collect operation, especially in the south of the country.
In addition, Activa Contracts, Arnold Clark’s contract hire, leasing and fleet management business based in Milton Keynes, offers licence checking as a service to its customers.
In total, Arnold Clark has some 10,000 drivers and their spouses on its licence checking database, including around 2,500 company car drivers, plus technicians and sales staff who drive vehicles as part of their regular work activities.
Licence checking across the group now falls under the remit of company secretary, Stuart Thorpe, who explained how keeping records for such a large number of drivers, with varying degrees of risk, up to date and legally compliant was now a straightforward task.
“Initially, we used to handle this ourselves but the scale of the task made the decision to appoint a specialist a very easy one. DriverCheck saves us a huge amount of admin time and effort as well as ensuring our records are kept up to date.
“A classic case in point was the introduction of the EU’s GDPR regulation in May 2018, which required new consents to be collected for all employees at the time. Three years later, a significant proportion of the consents needed to be renewed to continue to meet the DVLA’s requirements, which meant most of our renewals fell in May-June 2021.
“Because we had DriverCheck onboard and handling the update process for us, what could have been a highly labour-intensive task became relatively straightforward with renewal reminders generated automatically. It was then a case of following up exceptions, reducing the time and effort immensely,” Thorpe said.
Now, all new starters are added to the Arnold Clark licence checking database as part of the onboarding process, providing details of the status of their driving licence from day one.
Arnold Clark drivers’ licences are checked in varying frequencies depending on the driver risk. Those most at risk, including HGV drivers within the logistics division and those with significant numbers of points on their licences, have them checked most frequently, and the system is flexible enough to deal with this automatically.
Thorpe explained: “Our logistics fleet of about 100 drivers are checked most frequently because of what they are driving. We are expanding the logistics side as we look to increase the number of Click and Collect outlets we operate, particularly in the south of the country.
“The latest to go live was in Colchester and is now one of six we operate as standalone sites, with further expansion planned in the near future. Given the risk associated with driving a vehicle transporter, we place great emphasis on ensuring the licences of our drivers are checked frequently.”
Thorpe also reported that DriverCheck came into its own following a recent restructuring of the entire Arnold Clark driver database.
“DriverCheck was able to handle the restructuring very quickly and efficiently and the new system is now up and running and functioning very effectively. Again, they made what could have been a very labour intensive operation very straightforward,” he noted.
