1. Industry accreditation and earned recognition
1 December • Coventry

2. Ian Gallagher
Head of Policy – South West and Wales FTA

3. Industry Accreditation and Earned Recognition
Accreditation Schemes:
What is out there?
What are the differences?
What are the similarities?
What schemes should I use?
So these are the questions for today’s session. Where do we stand now with these schemes, and above all, what should operators do about them?

4. Operator Licensing Eco Stars, LCRS CLOCS / WRRR FORS
Standards and Schemes
Operator Licensing
Eco Stars, LCRS
CLOCS / WRRR
FORS
Truck / Van Excellence
Earned Recognition
This is what we will be looking at today. I’m not going to say any more about O Licencing in general, as you know what that is.
The first important point to note is that aside from O Licencing, all of these are voluntary standards and schemes – not regulatory requirements. So not access restrictions telling you which road you can use.
In this context, even when people say something is specified by Transport for London, what is meant is specified in their procurement of logistics, not in how they regulate the road.
So it’s different to something like London’s Safer Lorry Scheme or the proposal of a five star rating system I talked about earlier - which are done through TROs and are regulatory requirements.
So, we just start with a couple of environment schemes and then it’s on to the safety related initiatives.

5. Environmental Schemes
Eco Stars
Free rating scheme to improve fuel efficiency and reduce environmental impact in local authority areas.
Required: completion of application form on fuel efficiency actions, vehicle specification, driver training
FTA Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme (LCRS)
Free national support scheme for logistics operations carbon reductions
Required: data re fuel use and scale of operations
Eco Stars is a localised scheme that has been taken up by authorities in places like Sheffield, Nottingham, London, Devon & Cornwall, Greater Manchester and Liverpool. It’s particularly strong in Scotland, with schemes in places such as Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, and Glasgow. It’s a voluntary initiative that has been used in places with poor air quality where a low emission zone has not been thought the way to go.
LCRS is FTA’s scheme to show what voluntary industry action can do at the national level on carbon, and has so far proved very successful with its over 100 members showing a 8% better fuel and carbon reduction than the industry average.
These environmental schemes are often encouraged and they have their merits, but they are not being forcibly required. Safety issues are where most operators are feeling the heat and where we will focus our attention from here on – so this brings us on to…

6. Safety Standards: CLOCS, WRRR
CLOCS – TfL’s Construction Logistics and Cycling Safety standard.
This was designed in reaction to a high level of cycling fatalities with tippers in London. It is on some levels an understandable response – more than three quarters of the HGVs involved in cyclist fatalities in London are construction related.
CLOCS is not just applied in London though - it is intended to be used nationally by operators and construction customers and to apply to all commercial vehicles that visit construction sites.
It is used in this way by companies – so if you want to work with the likes of Costain and Skanska, you will increasingly have to get used to it. It is also used by specific projects, many in London such as Crossrail, Thames Tideway and Battersea Power Station, but increasingly also across the UK with major projects like HS2.
There are other aspects to the CLOCS project on developing safer vehicles for the future, but the CLOCS Standard is what matters here.
But the important word there is Standard. CLOCS provides a Standard, not a Scheme – there is no direct accreditation with CLOCS, CLOCS doesn’t certify you as compliant.
TfL also has their WRRR – or Work Related Road Risk requirements. These echo CLOCS, and are where much of CLOCS was drawn from. But again the WRRR is not a scheme, it is just a set of requirements.

7. Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme
This is where FORS – the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme – comes in.
This is an accreditation scheme which you have to pass an audit for.
It has been around for quite a few years but has changed a lot recently – in three main ways. Firstly, the scheme is now run independently of TfL. Secondly it is chargeable. Thirdly, its requirements have changed to align with CLOCS – specifically at FORS Silver. So, if you want to show you are CLOCS compliant, FORS Silver does the job.
Aside from requiring processes be in place to manage safety, CLOCS/FORS does require additional items be fitted to your vehicle…

8. CLOCS / FORS Silver vehicle requirements
Side guards and Class V & VI mirrors on all HGVs
Nearside blind spot minimised/eliminated through camera / sensor / fresnal lens
Audible left turn warning
Rear camera (+7.5t only)
Cyclist warning sticker
…listed here. These are safety items to reduce blind spots or alert others about vehicle manoeuvres, which are especially relevant to construction vehicles.
Recent research done for TfL has shown that off-road construction vehicles have a pedestrian blind spot at the front of the vehicle three times greater than that of a distribution vehicle, whilst the cyclist blind spot to the front left is more than two times greater.
This is because the cab sits higher, to allow greater ground clearance under the vehicle.

9. Standard
Scheme
So the short version is that CLOCS is the standard for construction traffic, and FORS is the scheme that you can use to show you are CLOCS compliant.
But what about the rest of the industry, outside of construction? Is FORS the right tool for aiding safety on the road for all, and achieving compliance with regulatory requirements?

10. Fleet Excellence
Here’s where we bring in FTA’s Fleet Excellence – which incorporates Van and Truck Excellence.
Van Excellence has been around for a few years now – giving members in the more lightly regulated van sector a way to demonstrate that their operations are of a high quality. It is established as a real success, with over 100 members representing over 125,000 vehicles.
Truck Excellence is a newer development, coming out of the success of Van Excellence and also, especially, member requests. Whilst members told us that they don’t want a proliferation of different standards, some said that they wanted an alternative route to achieving industry recognition, whilst others simply wanted a scheme that would help them with ensuring legal compliance.
So the idea behind Truck Excellence is to drive improvement in logistics through better achievement of regulatory requirements, and to enable operators to show what kind of operator they are.
It is a fact that when randomly stopped by DVSA, around one in 10 of the HGVs on the road has a serious defect or driver infringement. In places like London this can rise as high as 1 in four. So this agenda is very important for our industry.

11. Truck Excellence Standards
Truck Excellence standards are mapped directly to O licence undertakings, including specific legislation and recognised guidance (e.g. GTMR)
Standard areas:
Operator licensing
Transport management
Operating centres and vehicles
Vehicle maintenance
Drivers’ hours and working time
Good repute
Truck Excellence is designed to match the requirements of O Licencing and is meant to ensure that an operator has the right systems in place to be fully compliant more of the time. The idea is that this brings safety benefits as well as ensuing operators face fewer prohibitions at the roadside.
The main aspects covered by Truck Excellence are shown here [points].
An additional benefit of Fleet Excellence is giving an alternative route to meet the TfL WRRR requirement. There is now a ‘TfL’ ‘bolt on’ to Truck Excellence which is accepted by TfL as doing the same job as FORS Bronze.

12. DVSA Earned Recognition
Share compliance data
Light touch enforcement
Lift out of OCRS
Pilots in 2017
Then there is DVSA’s Earned Recognition, which you heard some details about earlier. As noted this is expected to afford you a "light touch" approach from DVSA at the roadside, in return for sharing compliance data with them at a systems level.
The Agency has said that operators who hold Earned Recognition will be lifted out of OCRS – in practice this should mean no targeted roadside stops – though obviously nothing would prevent you being part of the random checks that are carried out to survey the general performance of the industry.

13. 46 FORS Standards mapping 33
So how similar are all these schemes. Well lets start with FORS, where we have identified 46 key requirements – this was before the recent revision, but broadly the story the numbers tell remains the same. If we then overlay this with Truck Excellence and O Licencing…

14. Truck Excellence / Operator licensing
Standards mapping
Truck Excellence / Operator licensing 33 30 16
You can see there are 30 requirements that are common to both, 16 that are just in FORS, and a further 33 points in O Licensing and Truck Excellence not covered by FORS.
This is why a vehicle could be compliant with FORS Gold, and be illegal at the same time. So for example, O Licence audit items such as ‘Operating centres are authorised for use’, ‘Tachograph equipment checks & management’ or ‘Operator Licence discs displayed’ are required under Truck Excellence but not FORS.
The additional FORS items on the right are mostly those extra safety requirements which are we discussed before, which are especially useful for tippers and off road vehicles around blind spot minimisation.
We can also note that currently we don’t expect Earned Recognition to map perfectly to O Licencing so isn’t a universal solution there.
So where are these schemes being used:
FORS

15. Today and Tomorrow - CLOCS
CLOCS is now strongly embedded in the construction industry, with clients and contractors. If you deliver to construction sites, if you don’t have to work to it now, you probably will soon.
The standard will continue to evolve, with the key focus probably being on direct vision. As noted TfL have done a lot of research in this area and will want to use CLOCS to drive the use of tippers, and other off road vehicles, with reduced blind spots.

16. Where next?
FORS continues apace now under the control of the FORS Community Partnership.
As mentioned there has been a revision launched in the last few weeks that comes into effect in November, which adds in more environmental elements. Where might it go beyond this is less clear as it needs to keep aligned with what the CLOCS group want.

17. Where next?
On to Truck Excellence - it is very new but we understand over 40 companies have expressed an interest in taking it up. As noted, with the ‘bolt on’ it is now accepted by TfL in the same manner as FORS Bronze and we can expect this to be replicated by other bodies around the country as time goes on.
The next steps for the scheme are to be able accredit to the full CLOCS standard for those that need it – i.e. doing the same job as FORS Silver. There are also ambitions for a Passenger Excellence to work for that market.
And the Truck Excellence governance group is also aiming at the whole scheme being Earned Recognition equivalent – so if you have Truck Excellence you would automatically get Earned Recognition too. But obviously in the end that depends on the exact shape of Earned Recognition.

18. Where next? Earned Recognition
Speaking of which: our understanding DVSA is planning to have pilots for Earned Recognition running next year. It will launch in full only after that.
So what should operators do now – what is the way to go?

19. What to do right now?
Well, if you are involved in delivery to construction sites, you should implement the CLOCS requirements and look at working towards FORS Silver to ensure you can demonstrate this. Truck Excellence plus ‘bolt on’s’ may work in the future, but it is far from certain at the moment, so FORS would be the current recommendation here.
If however your work is not in construction traffic, and your interest is in general safety, demonstrating that you are a high quality operator, or in increasing your level of legal compliance on the road, Truck Excellence may be an more appropriate and user-friendly option.
Whether you use either of these schemes or not, Earned Recognition when launched may still be worthwhile – it certainly looks promising. But as DVSA still cannot offer certainty on the scale of benefits yet, we cannot be sure it will be worth the effort – and operators may not want to wait that long if they want to demonstrate their excellence now. When we have more details – the feedback from the pilots and sight of the final shape of the scheme – FTA will be able to make a better assessment for members.
That is the best estimation we have of the state of play today with these schemes, and the use members can make of them at the current time.
Earned Recognition

20. FTA Policy Contacts
CLOCS / FORS – Christopher Snelling
FTA Fleet Excellence – James Hookham
DVSA Earned Recognition – James Firth
If you wish to follow up on any of the issues raised in this presentation, here are the FTA policy contacts to use.
Thank you.