Arnold Clark Automobiles has seen huge savings in time and administrative effort by appointing DriverCheck to handle licence checking and legal compliance for over 10,000 drivers.

Company secretary Stuart Thorpe said the highly labour-intensive task of licence checking is now straightforward

The second ranked motor retailer in the UK by turnover, Arnold Clark operates 193 dealerships across the country, alongside 160 service centres, 17 accident repair sites and 14 parts facilities.

It employs around 11,000 people and has some 10,000 drivers and their spouses on its licence checking database. This includes around 2,500 company car drivers, plus technicians and sales staff, while the business is also growing its logistics fleet as it builds its digital Click and Collect operation.

In addition, Activa Contracts, Arnold Clark’s contract hire, leasing and fleet management business, offers licence checking as a service to its customers.

Licence checks were previously handled internally using the DVLA’s licence check facility, but this was becoming impractical from a sheer scale, effort and time.

Company secretary Stuart Thorpe explained: “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.”

All new company starters are now 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, with drivers on the firm’s expanding logistics fleet checked most, due to the risks associated with driving a vehicle transporter.

DriverCheck, now part of the Ebbon Group, also 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,” added Stuart Thorpe.