Setting up a fleet provides a company with an unrivalled opportunity to turn its attention to occupational road risk. It gives employers the chance to build in road safety right from the start, which will be both good for employees and business and meet a company's legal duties.

Driving is the most dangerous activity that the majority of people do in the course of their working lives. Up to a third of road crashes involve somebody who is at work at the time, meaning that about 20 people are killed and 220 seriously injured every week in crashes involving someone who was driving, riding or otherwise using the road for work purposes.

Work-related road risk is both a major road safety and occupational safety issue affecting not only vocational drivers - people whose job is driving - but also the vast range of workers who cannot do their job without travelling on the road at some point.

The Health and Safety Executive has made it clear that health and safety law applies to on-the-road work activities as it does to all work activities. When the police investigate fatal or serious road crashes, they consider whether anyone was at work, and if so, whether the working regime played any part in the crash.

The business case for managing occupational road risk (MORR) is very strong: preventing road accidents can lead to very significant cost savings, and measures to improve at-work road safety always more than pay for themselves.

For more than a decade, RoSPA has encouraged employers to look beyond addressing MORR as a "tick-box exercise" and has promoted the integration of a comprehensive MORR policy into a company's mainstream health and safety arrangements.

Essentially, within the framework that they should already have in place for managing other aspects of health and safety at work, employers must conduct suitable risk assessments and put in place all ‘reasonably practicable' measures to ensure that:

• Work-related journeys are safe

• Staff are fit and are competent to drive safely

• The vehicles used are fit-for-purpose and in a safe condition

Many organisations wonder where and how they should start. The first step is to establish their current status and whether they are managing the risk effectively and in compliance with their legal obligations. Most will need help to do this. Linking together its two key areas of safety management (road and occupational safety), RoSPA's MORR Review is designed to analyse road accident costs within organisations and to generate effective recommendations.

A complementary approach is the MORR Complete Compliance Tool, a new online service to provide both a company and driver audit trail that analyses risks, recommends action steps and records progress.

A wealth of advice is also available, including from Managing Occupational Road Risk - The RoSPA Guide. And specific guidance on many of the issues that should be included in an MORR policy is available from RoSPA's Driving for Work employers' guides that can be downloaded for free from www.rospa.com/roadsafety/resources/employers.htm

Whether your fleet consists of on-the-road sales staff, managers who drive to meetings or any other employees who use vehicles for work, managing occupational road risk is an issue that deserves your attention.

See www.rospa.com/roadsafety, www.rospa.com/drivertraining and www.morrcompletecompliance.co.uk for more information

Managing a fleet can be complex with cost management, environmental concerns and duty of care to company drivers requiring a great deal of time and organisation. Larger organisations will most likely employ a fleet manager but small and medium-sized businesses will not always be able to justify this expense.

Managing a fleet involves maintaining control over the acquisition of vehicles and their running costs. It is important to have a clearly defined fleet policy, which defines the types of vehicles an organisation will operate in its fleet and how they are used. As part of the fleet policy, clear reporting is needed to correctly determine running costs; using fuel cards, for example, can facilitate accurate reporting of fuel costs and fuel consumption.

At the Energy Saving Trust we believe it is possible to address environmental concerns and manage down costs. The active management of costs within a clear fleet policy will automatically reduce carbon emissions. This win/win situation means that through the implementation of simple measures, a fleet operator can make a positive impact on the environment whilst enjoying significant cost savings.

Choosing the right vehicles is an important decision. There are a number of technologies such as hybrid vehicles and biofuels that offer substantial savings in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These technologies have an important part to play in reducing CO2, and will become more prevalent with government encouraging their development through initiatives such as the RTFO (renewable transport fuel obligation), which will require 5% of all UK fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from a renewable source by 2010.

In many cases, reducing carbon emissions may come from selecting moderate vehicles within mainstream manufacturers' ranges. For example, the E220 Diesel will result in CO2 emissions of 167 g/km. This is a saving of 20% or 1.4 tonnes per year compared with the equivalent petrol model doing 20,000 miles per year. Also, the benefit in kind taxation bill to the employee is considerably reduced.

The Energy Saving Trust provides a range of advice for organisations operating small and large fleets to help achieve both cost savings and reductions in CO2 emissions. For more information or to order your free copy of ‘The essentials of fleet management - a guide for non fleet specialists', please call our helpline on 0845 602 1425 or visit our website at www.est.org.uk/transport

For many companies, vehicle operations are the most expensive business cost after employees. Running a car fleet is complex and brings into the decision-making process a company’s HR, procurement and finance departments, not to mention insurance, duty of care and environmental issues.

Whether to select vehicles based on wholelife costs or the most cost-effective funding mechanism; whether to opt for inclusive or exclusive maintenance if leasing or whether to outsource fleet management are all fundamental in the decision-making process.

Issues such as cash-for-car alternatives, insurance, benefit-in-kind tax, vehicles being fit-for-purpose, fuel management, fuel cards, vehicle replacement cycles, disposal routes if cars are outright purchased and, ultimately, who is going to be responsible for managing the fleet all need to be discussed and resolved.

Managing the occupational road risk of at-work drivers, irrespective of who owns the vehicle being driven on business, has been joined at the top of the fleet agenda by the importance of organisations focusing on reducing their carbon footprint.

The Health and Safety Executive’s Driving at work: Managing work-related road safety has become the best practice guide for companies in terms of laying down the responsibilities faced by companies who expect their staff to drive on business. Ignore the advice and the related health and safety laws and company bosses could find themselves in court and accompanied by unwanted newspaper headlines in the case of a serious crash.

Auditing vehicles and drivers from a health and safety aspect is crucial and measuring and monitoring vehicle usage is key if fleets are to be ‘green’. Operating low emission vehicles, mileage management, utilising alternatives to company cars, such as video conferencing, are all part of the responsibility of today’s ‘corporate mobility manager’.

The burden increases almost day-by-day as new laws, directives and regulations from Whitehall and Brussels come into force. Just looking at occupational road risk management, we have had laws banning the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving and smoking in company cars is already banned if driven on work and used by more than one person in Wales and Northern Ireland, with England following suit on July 1st.

Measures contained within the 2006 Road Safety Act which have yet to be introduced include graduated fines/points for speeding motorists, tougher sentences for causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving and harsher penalties for repeat drink-driving offenders including retaking of driving tests and the introduction of alcohol ignition locks.

Establishing a fleet is never a finished process as fleet operations are constantly evolving. But the fact remains that there are no short cuts and given the costs involved – financial and otherwise – establishing a coherent fleet along best practice lines is a business essential.

For more information visit www.jaama.co.uk

Small business setting up a fleet will face worries such as vehicle management and fuel consumption as well as standard or specialist breakdown cover. In addition, the introduction of corporate manslaughter legislation this summer will mean an organisation, or a senior individual within the organisation, can be prosecuted for management failures that lead to the deaths of employees. So for small firms running a fleet, the first step is to ensure that they are fulfilling their duty-of-care obligations by ensuring vehicles are roadworthy.

Whether employees are driving a company car, a vehicle purchased through a cash-for-car scheme or using their own car for business use, the new legislation will make it the employer's responsibility to ensure the vehicles are roadworthy. If companies are going to let employees use their own cars for business, it is the employer's responsibility to ensure employees are making the following essential safety checks:

• The car is roadworthy and has a current MOT (if more than three years old)

• The driver is licensed to drive

• The vehicle is insured for business use

• The car is regularly serviced

• The employee is carrying out basic maintenance checks such as oil, washer fluid, tyre pressures

• The employee has membership of a roadside recovery organisation

Small businesses must also make provision for their vehicles breaking down; something that can be costly both in terms of money and time. Over half (56%) of people driving for business break down every year compared to just 12% of private motorists. By buying into flexible breakdown and recovery services packages small businesses can help remove this administrative burden and free themselves up to run the business.

The administration of a fleet can be further managed with fuel cards with pre-agreed limits. Employees have been known to exaggerate fuel bills by as much as 25%. For a small business with no dedicated fleet manager to check fuel claims, these exaggerated claims can be hard to spot.

One solution is for fleets to introduce fuel cards with pre-agreed credit limits. This method still allows employees to claim back VAT, while helping the business maintain closer control over employees' costs. Some cards, such as the AA's Fleet Advantage, also have a credit facility to pay for car servicing enabling necessary work to be done promptly, keeping the vehicle on the road and saving the business time and money. Cards like this can also be used to produce online reports detailing where the card facility is being used and by who. So the card acts both as a credit facility and a management tool for streamlining costs.

Simply by making seemingly small changes to the way that the fleet is administered, small businesses can save both time and money on unnecessary administration and improve their efficiency through effective management tools and reporting.