SOUTH Central Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust has been able to manage its considerable occupational driving risk more efficiently and cost effectively having switched to fully electronic and automated licence checking with DriverCheck for its pool of over 3,600 drivers and 1,200 vehicles.
SCAS covers four counties – Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire – and a geographical area that stretches from Milton Keynes in the north to Portsmouth on the south coast. It also provides a range of emergency, urgent care and non-emergency healthcare services, along with logistics services plus non-emergency patient transport.
The Trust operates a mixed fleet of around 1,200 vehicles including around 380 frontline blue-light ambulance response ambulances and solo response cars, mainly Mercedes Sprinters, Fiat Ducatos and Skodas, some 580 Patient Transport vehicles and around 280 company cars and vans, plus a number of HART (Hazardous Area Response Team) vehicles and some special response units up to 7.5 tons.
Because of the nature of the work which is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, shift patterns of 8-12 hours are the norm, with potentially up to three drivers per vehicle at times – hence such a large pool of qualified drivers.
Jon Porter, Driving Standards Manager, said: “Our drivers’ licences are checked every three months to ensure they are entitled to drive the class of vehicle they are required to. As you might imagine, before employing DriverCheck, this was a huge manual task, often carried out by a large number of team leaders and supervisors across the organisation.
“It was very hard to keep track of whether the required checks had actually been carried out on time or to the required standard, and the opportunity for errors was considerable. Now, our system is completely paperless and drivers complete the registration process via e-declaration rather than physical forms.
“DriverCheck manages the whole process which takes the burden away from us completely and not only cuts down on admin time and staff resources, but is far more cost effective.”
