Van Compliance Is Catching Up With HGV Standards — Is Your Fleet Ready?

For years, van operators have had it easier than HGV operators when it comes to compliance. That gap is closing fast. Arval, one of the UK's largest fleet leasing and mobility specialists, is warning businesses running light commercial vehicles (LCVs) that a wave of new legislation is pushing van compliance requirements closer to those long faced by HGV operators — and many fleets aren't ready for it.

What's driving the shift

Van operators are facing a growing list of regulatory obligations, according to Arval, including new MOT testing rules, changes to drivers' hours regulations, and enhanced tachograph requirements. It's a meaningful shift for an asset class that's traditionally carried a lighter compliance burden than HGVs.

It's a particularly live issue for the growing number of 4.25-tonne electric vans being adopted to replace 3.5-tonne diesel models — vehicles that increasingly sit right on the boundary between standard van rules and heavier-vehicle requirements.

It's not the rules — it's the paperwork

Eddie Parker, LCV consultant at Arval, says the real exposure for most businesses isn't any single rule change. It's whether their existing fleet governance — policies, procedures, and record-keeping — has kept pace with how regulators and enforcement bodies now view van operations.

HGV operators are used to working inside formal compliance structures: transport managers, maintenance controls, fatigue management systems, driver training records, and documented incident procedures. Van fleets typically don't have the same infrastructure in place, which Arval warns can leave a serious evidential gap when something goes wrong.

Where most van fleets fall down

Most operators do have some policies in place — covering driver fatigue, mobile phone use, or daily vehicle checks, for example. The harder question is proving any of it actually happened. Can you show how a policy was enforced? How training was delivered, and whether drivers understood it? How a manager responded when an issue was flagged?

These aren't hypothetical questions. They become critical the moment police, the Health and Safety Executive, or another enforcement body investigates a serious incident — because the scrutiny extends well beyond the collision itself, into the wider systems that were supposed to prevent it.

Growth is outpacing governance

The timing matters. Arval's 2026 Mobility Observatory Barometer found that more than a third of fleets (35%) expect to be running more vans within the next three years — up five percentage points on last year. Fleets are growing with confidence, but for many, the governance behind that growth hasn't caught up with what regulators now expect.

As Parker put it, van fleets aren't about to face full HGV-level oversight overnight, but "the gap between the two is narrowing."

What to check now

Arval's advice for LCV operators comes down to three honest questions:

• Are incident procedures actually tested and understood — not just written down and filed away?
• Is management responsibility for compliance clearly defined, so it's obvious who owns what?
• Would your current records hold up if an insurer, the DVSA, or the HSE asked to see them tomorrow?

For most trades businesses running van fleets, the honest answer to at least one of those is "not yet."

How Fleet Track PRO helps close the gap

This is exactly the governance gap Arval is describing — and it's the gap Fleet Track PRO was built to close for van and light commercial fleets.

Instead of paper checksheets or a WhatsApp group for defects, drivers complete their daily DVSA walkaround check from a mobile app: checklist, required photos, and any defect captured with a timestamp. The moment something's flagged, the manager gets a push notification — so there's no question later about whether it was seen or ignored. Fitters then work the job through to close-out, and the whole chain — report, alert, repair, resolution — sits in one digital audit trail instead of being scattered across paper, texts, and memory.

That's a direct answer to two of Arval's three questions. Management responsibility is clearly defined, because the workflow itself makes it obvious who's accountable at each step — driver, manager, fitter. And the records would hold up under scrutiny, because they're timestamped and centralised the moment they're created, not reconstructed afterwards. It's also the same evidence base that matters if an incident is ever investigated: what regulators look at when they examine the wider corporate systems around a collision is exactly this — proof that checks happened, defects were seen, and someone acted on them.

Fleet Track PRO is built specifically for van and light commercial fleets — not HGVs. Plans start at £8 per vehicle per month (5-vehicle minimum), with a 7-day free trial and no card required. For scale: a single prohibition notice can cost more than £300.

Start your free trial at fleettrackpro.co.uk →

This article summarises general principles and is not legal advice. Always check current GOV.UK guidance for your operation.