The short answer
A walkaround check is the inspection a driver carries out before using a heavy goods vehicle, to confirm it is safe to take on the road. DVSA guidance is that the driver checks the vehicle before the journey, and operators must make sure drivers carry out a walkaround check before the vehicle is first used each day.
The check itself is only half the process. The other half is the record: what was found, who found it, who it was reported to, what was done about it, and whether that evidence can still be produced months later. Most of the operational difficulty sits in that second half, which is what this guide concentrates on.
This is practical guidance based on published DVSA and GOV.UK material. It is not legal advice and CMD is not a regulator. Operators should work from the current official guidance and their own compliance procedures when making operational decisions.
Why the check matters beyond the vehicle
A walkaround check protects the person driving and everyone around the vehicle. It also sits inside a wider obligation: an operator licence carries undertakings about keeping vehicles fit and serviceable, and the operator licensing guide expects a transport manager to have the authority to decide whether a vehicle is roadworthy before it goes out.
That makes the check part of a system rather than a standalone task. DVSA’s guide to maintaining roadworthiness expects those systems to be effective, continually monitored and audited — so the quality of your records is what demonstrates the system works.
Who is responsible
Responsibility is shared, and it is worth being precise about how.
The driver is legally responsible for the condition of the vehicle while it is in use on the road. That responsibility does not end when the vehicle leaves the yard: drivers are expected to stay alert to warning signs during the journey and report defects or symptoms that affect safe operation.
The operator is responsible for the system around the driver. That includes making sure drivers actually carry out the checks, and making sure adequate maintenance resources are available to rectify reported defects before the vehicle is used again.
The transport manager is expected to manage transport operations continuously and effectively. In practice the operator licensing guide describes this as making sure defect reports are completed and returned, that reported problems are recorded accessibly, that defects are repaired promptly, and that unroadworthy vehicles are taken out of service.
When the check should happen
The check belongs before the journey — before the vehicle is first used that day. If a driver takes over a vehicle mid-shift, the sensible reading is that they are taking on responsibility for its condition and need their own confidence in it.
Where trailers are swapped during the day, DVSA guidance is that a check should be made on each trailer being used. A combination is only as roadworthy as both halves of it, and a trailer that has been standing, or has come from another operator’s yard, has not been covered by the morning’s check on the unit.
What the check covers
DVSA publishes a walkaround check list covering both the cab and the exterior of the vehicle. Rather than reproduce it here, it is worth understanding the shape of it, then working from the official list itself.
From inside the cab, the check covers the driver’s ability to see and control the vehicle: mirrors, cameras and glass, the view to the front, wipers and washers, warning lights and gauges on the dashboard, steering, the horn, brakes and air build-up, seatbelts, the height marker, and the security of the cab, doors and steps.
Around the outside, it covers the things that fail visibly or leave evidence on the ground: lights and indicators, fuel and oil leaks, the security of the body and wings, battery condition, AdBlue, exhaust smoke, spray suppression, tyres and wheel fixings, brake lines and the trailer parking brake, electrical connections, coupling security, load security, number plate, reflectors, markings and warning plates, and any specialised equipment. Electric and alternative-fuel vehicles add their own items, including the high voltage emergency cut-off.
Work from the current DVSA walkaround check list rather than a copy of it, because the official list is the version that gets updated.
Recording the result
A check that produces no record is difficult to evidence later. DVSA guidance is that a defect report should identify the vehicle by registration or identification mark, the date, the details of the defect or symptom, the driver’s assessment of it, the driver’s name, and who it was reported to.
The guide to maintaining roadworthiness expects the record to be completed rather than abandoned at the point of reporting. It should also carry the rectification work that was done and the date it was finished — so a single record follows the defect from discovery through to repair.
Electronic records are acceptable. The requirement is about the information and its availability, not the medium.
Nil defect reporting
A nil defect report records that a check happened and found nothing. DVSA describes it as a positive report that the vehicle is free from defects, and it is evidence that the driver carried out their duty on a day when nothing was wrong.
This matters more than it first appears. Without nil reporting, the only trace of your check regime is the days something went wrong, and a clean fleet looks identical to a fleet that is not checking at all. Nil defect reports should be retained for at least three months under the guide to maintaining roadworthiness.
When a defect is found
The first decision is whether the vehicle can be used. Dangerous defects must be put right before the journey continues — DVSA is explicit that driving with a dangerous defect can carry an unlimited fine and a prison sentence.
The driver’s assessment is part of the record, which is why the report asks for it. From there the defect needs to reach someone who can act on it, the vehicle needs to be held if it is not safe, and the repair needs to be recorded against the same defect so the two halves do not become separate pieces of paper.
Defects found during a journey follow the same logic. The obligation to report does not wait for the end of the shift, and a symptom noticed at a delivery point is as reportable as one found in the yard at six in the morning.
The workflow around the check
Most operators already know what a check is. The part that tends to be uneven is the handoff between the person who finds a defect and the person who fixes it. It is worth writing that sequence down as an operational process:
- Vehicle allocated to a driver for the day.
- Driver completes the walkaround check.
- Result recorded — nil defect, or defect with the driver’s assessment.
- Defect reaches a named responsible person rather than a pile.
- That person decides whether the vehicle can be used.
- An unsafe vehicle is stopped from going out, and that decision is visible.
- Repair or action is recorded against the original defect.
- The completed record is retained.
- Repeat defects and patterns are reviewed periodically.
This is an operational process, not a statutory format — DVSA does not prescribe these nine steps. What the guidance does expect is that the underlying system is effective, monitored and audited, and that operators analyse defect patterns to identify where a vehicle, a component or a process needs attention.
Step nine is the one most often skipped. The same component failing on the same vehicle three times is information, and it is only visible if someone is looking across records rather than at one at a time.
Records and how long to keep them
Retention periods differ depending on the record, so it is worth separating them:
- Safety inspection and maintenance records: at least 15 months, including for vehicles that have been sold or removed from the operator licence.
- Driver defect reports: at least 15 months, together with the assessment and the details of the repair.
- Nil defect reports: at least three months.
Records must be available to the traffic commissioner on request. That request is the real test of a record-keeping system: not whether the paperwork exists somewhere, but whether it can be produced, for a named vehicle and a specific date, without a search through a filing cabinet.
Paper or digital
Both are acceptable. An operator running a careful paper system with disciplined filing can evidence its process perfectly well, and a digital system used carelessly can still lose information. The medium is not the compliance.
What a digital process can offer is operational rather than legal: consistent fields so reports do not arrive half-completed, timestamps that are not written from memory, a central record instead of paperwork living in a cab, faster escalation from the driver to whoever can act, and the ability to search. It also makes the periodic review realistic — spotting a repeat defect across six months of paper is a genuinely hard task, and spotting it across a queryable record is not.
None of that removes the driver’s responsibility for the vehicle, the operator’s responsibility for the system, or the transport manager’s judgement about whether a vehicle goes out. A system records decisions; it does not make them.
A short readiness check
If you want to test your own process, these questions tend to expose the gaps quickly:
- Can you produce the defect report for a specific vehicle on a specific date last year?
- Does every defect report have a rectification record attached to it?
- Are nil defect reports being captured, or only the days something went wrong?
- Is there a named person defects reach, and is that still true on a Saturday?
- When a vehicle is held, is the decision recorded anywhere?
- Has anyone reviewed repeat defects in the last quarter?
Where VERIGO fits
VERIGO is CMD’s fleet compliance and transport operations product. It brings vehicle and driver records, inspections, defects, maintenance and reporting into connected operational workflows, so a defect and the work that resolves it stay attached to the same vehicle record rather than sitting in separate systems. Maintenance and workshop jobs carry repair responsibility, assigned work, priority, parts, status and completion evidence.
VERIGO is software for running the workflow described above. It is not a regulator, it does not certify compliance, and it does not replace the operator’s own procedures or the transport manager’s judgement. The obligations in this guide sit with the operator and the driver regardless of what system records them.
If your process is sound and your evidence is hard to retrieve, that is a workflow problem worth looking at — with a product, a better paper system, or simply a clearer handoff.