A car check day has highlighted concerns around the use of privately-owned vehicles for work after it revealed 88% of one company’s grey fleet needed attention.

While some incidents were minor, others were more significant, including dangerously low oil levels and illegal tyres.

“We found a huge discrepancy between the conditions of privately owned and company vehicles,” said Simon Oliphant, chief executive at Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions, which carried out the checks.

“The number of privately owned vehicles that required significant attention was surprisingly high, meaning that a fair proportion of these drivers needed to act immediately.”

In this instance 64 vehicles were checked, but industry estimates suggest there are between one and three million grey fleet vehicles used for work.