Posted By Sean Fraser
Martin,

Have you contacted your insurer yet? I presume you have company vehicles on site and have the requisite business use vehicle insurance already, so they can advise you. Alternatively, contact any of the advertsied Insurance providers for advice, such Norwich Union - they are moving into specialist health & Safety areas and no doubt they've been asked this question before.

One thing though - once you've done the leg work for this, could you post it back on here so we can share the information? Partly tongue in cheek but someone recently asked the question in "Transport of Casualty" - one response was that it was cheaper to use a cab in the rare event of needing to transport an injured person not requiring ambulance, than it was to extend personal car insurance. It all comes down to risk / reward calculations at the end of the day.

Apply the same principles to the issue in hand - how often do you need to make these unscheduled collections/deliveries and how far do they have to travel, at what times etc.. Use the basic tenets of risk assessment to get your answer and then re-address your problem.

Could you not use a courier service? That way you don't need to worry about it.

You are right to be concerned, primarily on the part of your employees - we can never predict when an accident will occur, hence the need for insurance! (Although we can take steps to reduce the likelihood, obviously). So imagine the resentment it would cause if an employee received an injury during this transport, doing the company "a favour" as it were, and failed to make a successful insurance claim as a result. Another case where expediency over safety seems acceptable at the time but proves counter-productive in the long run.

Posted By Bill Elliott
Martin - I think it is entirely dependant on the insurer and the wording of the cover. My insurance covers me to and from my place of work but specifically EXCLUDES business use other than that. In case of a claim arising in the situation you describe I would not be covered by my insurance and therefore would be in breach of road traffic legislation I presume. However, I have had business use added to my cover for the princley sum of under £10 per annum. A small price to pay I think and worth enquiring about.

Posted By Cathy Ricketts
We contract all our employees to be covered for business use - a number of companies dont charge extra for adding this clause and those that do add a minimal amount. We pay the difference between the standard charge and the additional cost providing proof of the difference is provided. That way everyone is covered and we dont have a problem. This also means that if anyone is attending a training event etc during the working week and carries a colleague in their car they are also covered. Our current workforce is just over 400.

Posted By Graham Bullough
As Cathy Ricketts has already pointed out, some insurance companies make no charge for including business use on people's car insurance policies and others make a relatively small charge of £10 (equivalent to about 4 or 5 pints of pub beer depending whereabouts you are in the UK) or so. Better to pay a little extra (better still if the employer will meet the cost of any extra charge) than give your insurer a chance of not having to pay up if you happen to be involved in an accident while driving on business.

It's worth pointing out that many employers whose staff drive either regularly or occasionally on business, insist that employees have an insurance policy which includes cover for official buiness. My own employer's mileage claim form includes a declaration that the claimant's policy "provides cover whilst the car is used on official business, for full third party insurance, including cover against risk of injury to, or death of, passengers and damage to property."

However, I suspect that most employees filling in such claim forms don't even read such declarations, so it's worthwhile for employers to at least remind employees about them from time to time. However, employers ought to avoid any doubt by requiring employees using or liable to use their cars for business use to bring in their insurance certificate to prove that they do have insurance and that it includes business cover! For good measure why not add the need to produce a valid driving licence and current MOT certificate? In this connection it seems that most employers take on new employees without making any checks on documents to prove qualifications, including driving licences. Thus, most employers would remain unaware of any employees with driving bans. It is not unknown for some employers to stack up all sorts of problems for themselves by giving company cars to banned employees and including them on the company's group vehicle insurance scheme!