It matters not one jot what anyone here thinks, though there will probably be many and varied opinions from the barrack room. So, at the risk of severe haemorrhage while stating the obvious, ask the insurer!

Below is the response my insurer gave me recently :- If the car is being used in connection with work, either to visit clients or more than one place of work, the client will need a level of business cover. Class 1 It is only the Regular Driver and Spouse who may have business use class 1. Business cover does NOT extend to cover any other named drivers on the policy, although the named drivers may still use the car for social, domestic and pleasure purposes. Class 2 Class 2 covers named drivers and the RD/Sp business use. The named drivers only have the business use cover when they are driving the car in connection with the business of the main driver, They do NOT have cover if they are driving for the business of a different employer. Class 3 Class 3 use provides business cover for the transportation of light goods, which have already been purchased, for example, pizzas or flowers. The driver who needs cover while selling services on a "door to door" basis will be covered by this option. Note: Irrespective of whether or not the client is getting paid for the work that they do, they may require business use if they are either carrying passengers in the car or using the car to travel between places of work during the day.

Having just seen you response re the number of cars, you haven't got an easy job due the potential differences in the insurers definitions. Could the organisation arrange a 'blanket' policy to cover the 'at work' part of the insurance with 4000 cars there should be hefty discounts available to be negotiated as a group policy?

Like it or like it not Ian's reply is the best approach but just to tone it down a bit, I would suggest that you get each of the 4000 people to have their insurance company complete a pro forma stating that they are covered for the work role(s) intended. For the wording could I suggest you contact your CFR coordinator who probably do this for volunteers.

It won't be much of a task. After all, the biggest NHS Trusts do not employ anything like 4,000 community nurses. In fact, I doubt that there are as many as 4,000 community nurses across the entire UK!

This is really a HR/managing issue I tend to find that for 'basic'* work use insures do not levy an additional charge on their cover at this time on private car insurance so staff should not be worried from that side. That said it will not take long for insurers to catch on and charge for the 'work' element of their cover and thereafter the employer will have to pay Everybody who uses their car for work should have a simple half page guide issued to them which also covers the question; 'are you insured for work activities' and anybody not ticking the 'yes' box should be asked the question why by their immediate line manager - the line manager should be armed with the appropriate information to help staff and they should look at everybodies documents at least once a year to confirm compliance It sounds like a large task but in fact its proportunal as senior managers should be tasked with managing their own staff so they should action their lower managers to act and so on down *Carriage of various chemicals and waste is another matter for further discussion

Not sure if this helps much,but We require staff and volunteers to have the correct business class insurance and to confirm this on every mileage expenses claim they make. Not wanting to shirk responsibility I believe it is in fact the responsibility of the driver to ensure they have the correct insurance cover, while we insist they have business cover and insist they tell us they have, we allow them to meet their own legal requirement under the Road Traffic Act. You talk about your staff being covered while using their own cars, have you looked to see what your volunteer drivers do? That's if you have them and they are not part of another organisation?

When using your own vehicle for work purposes, insurance is the responsibility of the driver, the employer should make diligence checks that each private vehicle driver is suitably insured. I.e obtains copy certificates each year. The costs of this insurance is part and parcel of the HMRC mileage rates, 40p for first 10,000 etc which I am sure each driver is claiming for the business miles they complete. I would suggest the short answer is to obtain from your insurance company the correct definition for the level of cover they would expect to see for this work if you was providing company cars. This is then communicated to each driver who then provides the appropriate insurance cover certificate. hope this helps

Tobin, Pressed "Send" too soon! I should have added that you do not neeed to contact the insurers - that is the car owners responsibility. Any additional premium is covered by the mileage allowance that they receive. As other people have suggested you could seek to extend your existing motor policy - for vehicles that you own - to cover employee's own cars. It is possible - it can be done. Phil

Standard policy. Social, Domestic and Pleasure. Which includes commuting to and from a single place of work. On a standard insurance no cover is provided for use FOR work OTHER than commuting TO and FROM it. I ASKED my insurer about that point when I needed to carry tools to/from work. the insurer was quite specific about what I needed minimum. I needed to add "carriage of own goods" to the policy and I #was not# insured if I did not.

Tobin, I think Bob's reply at Nr 12 is the way forward. Don't take it all on yourself. He also raises the issue of Waste, often overlooked - May I suggest you spak to the Environment Agency and confirm that the carriage of small amounts of Clinical Waste, albeit soiled dressing etc, is covered by your relevant licences. We had a recent incident where we had employees and Labour Only Sub Contractors using their vans etc to move small amounts of construction waste accross a housing estate to a central skip. By the letter of the law, the employees were covered by our licence but not LOSC or volunteers! They also went on to say that it would be extremely unlikely that we would ever be "Pulled" for this practice, but they also stated that there are some "Pedantic Consultants" out there that would pull us up for this. Made me chuckle! I got the information from them over the phone and found them to be extremely helpful and practical. Regards Clive

Thanks Clive and yes the waste is an issue but we are on top of that with adcie from the Environment Agency. Thanks.

Ian if I had the foggiest idea what you meant by 'numerator', 'nominator' and 'denominator' in this context rather than in my maths homework I would get back to you; but I don't (do you?) and so I won't.

No Problem.

Tobin, you ask a perfectly legitimate question and one can only speculate at the necessity of the tone used by Ian in #2, and whether we should heed the advice therein as regards to any comments that he himself posts? Of course there are countless examples where public money is used to ‘pick up the pieces’ of any number of errors over the years. While responsibility MIGHT be pinned on one individual or another it is highly unlikely (almost certainly not) that the financial responsibility to put an error ‘right’ would fall in the same place; for hopefully obvious reasons! I personally find the suggestion particularly unhelpful. In line with what others have said, I think it goes without saying that insurance for "social, domestic & pleasure" is not suitable/sufficient for the scenario you describe. Some kind of business use is required and I would suggest that class 1 is probably insufficient. In saying that, it does appear that the class of business cover does vary from one insurer to the next so it would appear that perhaps the best thing might be to provide guidance to your staff as to the general level of cover required so that they can then check this with their own insurer that they have the appropriate level for the work they are doing. If it helps, we are required to sign a declaration that we have the appropriate cover every time we make a travel claim and we also carry out annual licence, MOT and insurance checks. I hope the more positive and constructive answers help you to find a way forward.

If it helps, we have a statement on the expenses form (where drivers claim their mileage allowance) where in signing the claim, they confirm that they have checked their insurance cover is appropriate for business use. Last time I renewed my personal insurance, my insurers (Every Little Helps) gave me business use included in the price they'd quoted for SD&P, others may also do this. Unfortunately our driving policy means you can't use a vehicle for a journey which could reasonably be completed by public transport, so I haven't yet been able to take advantage!