Posted By Phil Parkin My health and safety consultant has advised me that it is ok for employees to use their own vehicles for travel to other sites during working hours. He has said that working on another site means that it will "become the employees permanent place of work" even if it is for a few days at a time. I've never heard this argument used before. In short it means clock in, load tools into employees personal car, then go on site. Is he correct and what are the insurance and vicarious liability issues? Some sites are company owned and some are not.

Posted By John Richards Perhaps the safety consultant should leave insurance matters to an insurance consultant ? The change of insurance to carriage of goods (if the tools are the employers then "carriage of own goods" is irrelevant) has already been mentioned. Depending on the weight of the tools, a car may be insufficient. They may also need restraining. The remote site being a "permanent place of work" for a few days is a scam to get around the insurance provision of "to and from a permanent place of work", and in the case of an accident I suspect that both the company and the insured will have some serious problems.

Posted By Phil Parkin Permanent place of work. What about building workers who may move from site to site? I would think the trips to/from work is covered by their insurance but once they are on the job and getting paid company vehicles would be the norm. Is my understanding of this correct?

Posted By Pete48 Yes employees can use their own vehicles as part of their work. Their motor vehicle insurance needs to cover that risk (business use) including carriage of goods if that is part of the work. Tools of the trade are not normally considered to be goods. It is not clear from your question as to whether you consider that they are "at work" or "commuting" to their normal place of work. (which may be nothing more than the place to which they report for instruction at some interval) Obviously if they are "at work" then your responsibility as an employer applies and all matters such as liabilities, duties etc apply, so no difference to anything else they do. The definition of a normal place of work is complex and is not only relevant to H&S but perhaps equally importantly for tax revenue purposes. A quick look at the HMRC site for their definitions of places of work will discover several pages of closely spaced type. So, your advice as reported here is perhaps, as Ron has suggested, lacking in some detail. Maybe you need to better understand your consultants advice. I suggest you go back to your consultant and tell them that you need more detail in order to understand their position. As ever, making any judgement on this forum about your consultants abilities or the relevance or accuracy of their advice is not one that I would make. I have only seen your interpretation of that advice not the actual advice. Hope this helps you to clarify things with your consultants.

Posted By clairel A very rational response Pete48. And a welcome change from the consultant bashing that seems to be occuring on the IOSH forum at the moment. By the way I have my car insurance for business use and it doesn't cost me a penny (DirectLine if anyone is interested). If employees ever use their vehicles in such a way that it might remotely be considered to be on company business (going to the bank, going to the cash & carry...) then I recommend business use insurance. That is just to protect the employee not the company, as insurance companies will find any excuse not to pay out.

Posted By John Richards I'm not "knocking" anyone, just pointing-out that a health and safety advisor is not the best person to accept advice from on insurance, which is a complex area (for biz), and one in which a mistake can lead to serious amounts of money being lost, or serious amounts of time locked-up being served. And, my own insurers advice (my vehicle is insured biz use and carriage of own goods) was that my [standard] insurance would only cover me for tools needed in the operation of the vehicle...ie: breakdown. Anyway, since the results of getting-it-wrong are so serious, I spent the extra. If biz gets it wrong, they could end-up carrying the entire liability themselves, with no insurer to protect them. http://www.rospa.com/roa...fety/info/ownvehicle.pdf