All Fleet Services has devised and implemented a system to ease the administration of handling thousands of Dartford Crossing (Dart) Charges for the fleet industry. 

The British Vehicle, Renting and Leasing Association (BVRLA) recently announced that they had agreed a process change with Highways England and their service provider Emovis, that would allow fleets to transfer liability of Dart charges via a report instead of by paper.

All Fleet Services saw an opportunity to streamline this process and moved swiftly to develop and agree enhancements that would benefit their customers even further and allow them to process Dart Charges digitally. 

Dave Scobie, managing director of All Fleet Services explained: “We are always looking to innovate and streamline services for the benefit of our clients and their drivers. This is why when we saw the BVRLA announcement, we contacted Emovis and through them Highways England to offer our ideas to enhance and simplify what had been agreed with the BVRLA. They very quickly saw the benefits of what we were proposing for all involved.”

Under the new methodology All Fleet Services will provide a PDF declaration per customer which removes the need for the information to be provided as part of the data feed. They will also produce a daily CSV file for Dart Charge transfer liability per fleet that they represent, which Emovis will consume on behalf of Highways England. They will then transfer into their core system removing manual keying as originally planned. 

Scobie said: “At All Fleet services we have already processed 50,000 Dart Charges fines, since the fine was introduced, so we are very aware of the administrative impact. Our new automated process is streamlined and efficient and will mean just one automated daily file for all our Fleet Hire clients. This means there is a much faster turnaround of transfer liability and a reduction in fines administration. There is also a reduction in printing and postage costs for our clients, much less scope for errors from manual handling and no risk of loss in the post, with all the extra work and costs that this involves. We see this just a first step in a major move to moving fine management from its current paper basis to a digital solution”.  

Neil Conway, chief executive officer of Emovis UK added:  “When we heard about the innovations being proposed by All Fleet Services for the way in which Dart Charge fines are administered for Fleets, we were delighted. It is very much a win win, from the point of view of everybody involved in the process, so we were very keen to see it introduced as soon as possible. Working with our client Highways England who also saw the benefits involved we delighted to be able to fast track these changes.”