Every operator licence application asks how vehicles will be maintained, and the answer splits the industry in two: the operators with their own workshops, and the ones who contract maintenance out. Both models are legitimate. What is not legitimate - and what DVSA probes at every audit - is the belief that contracting out moves the responsibility with the spanners. It does not. The Guide to Maintaining Roadworthiness is explicit that the operator keeps the roadworthiness duty whichever model they choose, and the two models fail in characteristically different ways.
The guide’s framing is worth repeating because the industry resists it: the procedures and systems it describes are for operators, drivers and everyone responsible for operating, maintaining or providing commercial vehicles - and the operator remains answerable for roadworthiness regardless of who physically turns the wrench. A contracted-out fleet with a brake failure faces exactly the same public inquiry questions as an in-house one: what were your safety inspection intervals, where are the records, what did you do about the defects. “The garage deals with that” is not an answer the traffic commissioner has ever accepted.
Running your own workshop buys control - inspection timing, repair priority, parts quality, and a maintenance team that learns the fleet’s quirks. The obligations that come with it are equally direct: facilities and equipment adequate for the fleet, competent staff with documented training, genuine independence between the people inspecting and the people under pressure to keep vehicles earning, and the full record trail the guide demands. The failure mode of in-house maintenance is slow erosion: the workshop becomes a cost centre to be squeezed, inspections slide when vehicles are busy, and the transport office starts signing off what it should be challenging. The fix is governance, not enthusiasm - the maintenance function needs its own standing, its own budget authority and a direct line that does not run through the person whose bonus depends on utilisation.
For fleets that contract out, the guide draws the sharpest line in the whole document: the operator should have a contract or written agreement with the maintenance provider detailing the safety inspection arrangements, the frequency, and the defect rectification process - enough to satisfy yourself that an acceptable level of roadworthiness is maintained. An example maintenance contract sits in the guide’s annexes. The written agreement is not bureaucracy; it is the only evidence that a system exists. DVSA’s auditors ask for it by name, and “we’ve used the same garage for years” without one reads as no system at all.
The failure mode of contracted maintenance is assumption: inspections booked but not verified, invoices filed without checking the work they describe, defect reports handed to a driver to “mention at the next service”. The operator’s duties in a contract model are supervisory - reviewing the inspection sheets when they come back, tracking rectifications to closure, auditing the provider periodically, and being prepared to change providers when the paperwork gets sloppy. The guide expects those inspection records, brake test results and MOT certificates to be in the operator’s hands, not just the garage’s.
The honest decision framework is about volume, geography and competence. A fleet big enough to keep a workshop loaded, concentrated at one or two depots, with the management depth to run a maintenance function properly, usually benefits from in-house. A dispersed fleet, a small operation, or one without the appetite to employ fitters and buy brake testers usually belongs with a reputable contract provider - chosen on quality evidence, with a written agreement, and supervised like any other critical supplier. The mixed model many fleets actually run - own workshop for routine, contracts for specialists and overflow - inherits the duties of both.
Whichever way the decision lands, the test DVSA applies is identical: show me the system, show me the records, show me that you - the operator - are in control of your fleet’s roadworthiness. The maintenance model is a choice. The accountability is not.
Whichever model is chosen, one discipline sits above both: review. The guide’s systems are not set-and-forget - the fleet’s work changes, vehicles age, mileages climb, and the maintenance arrangements that fitted last year can quietly stop fitting this one. Operators who build an annual maintenance review into their calendar - intervals against actual use, provider performance against the agreement, brake test evidence against expectations - catch the drift while it is still cheap. The traffic commissioner’s question at any hearing is some version of ‘when did you last check that your system works’, and a dated review document is the only convincing answer.