Sample policy · Domiciliary care

Travel, driving and mobile working policy (domiciliary care)

Statutory anchor: Regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2936). The primary law for this policy is the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the Road Traffic Act 1988. This policy also engages Regulation 17 (good governance). · primary source

1. What the regulation says

Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way for service users. (Reg 12(1) (the headline duty))

assessing the risks to the health and safety of service users of receiving the care or treatment, (Reg 12(2)(a) (risk assessment))

doing all that is reasonably practicable to mitigate any such risks, (Reg 12(2)(b) (risk mitigation))

ensuring that persons providing care or treatment to service users have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to do so safely, (Reg 12(2)(c) (staff competence))

Regulation 17 adds the governance and records duties this policy operationalises:

Systems or processes must be established and operated effectively to ensure compliance with the requirements in this Part. (Reg 17(1): the umbrella duty)

The full text is at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/12 and https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2936/regulation/17. Where this policy and the regulation diverge, the regulation wins.

2. Plain-English summary

Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way. The regulation lists the areas a provider must address, including risk assessment, risk mitigation, staff competence, safe premises, safe equipment, sufficient equipment and medicines, medicines safety, infection prevention and shared-care planning. Regulation 12 is central to CQC's safety expectations. For a home care service this means travel between visits is planned so it can be done safely, workers who drive are legal and fit to drive, and the records and devices carried between homes are protected.

3. Purpose

Home care workers spend a large part of the day travelling between visits, often carrying records and a work device. This policy sets out how the Service keeps workers safe while they travel, makes sure those who drive are legal and fit to do so, and protects the information workers carry between homes.

The Service must verify this policy against current health and safety and road traffic law and its own insurance arrangements before adoption.

4. Scope

This policy applies to:

5. Roles and responsibilities

6. Travel and mobile-working procedure

The Service follows this procedure:

  1. Plan the round. Build in realistic travel time, breaks, parking or public-transport constraints and known access risks.
  2. Confirm driver checks. Before a worker drives for the Service, record licence, MOT where needed, business-use insurance and any fitness-to-drive declaration required by local procedure.
  3. Check route safety. Consider lone-working risk, evening visits, isolated areas, winter weather, travel after incidents and any known risk at the address.
  4. Protect records and devices. Confirm how paper records, phones, tablets, keys and access details are secured during travel.
  5. Monitor delays. Workers tell the office when travel will make a visit late or unsafe. The office updates the person and arranges cover where needed.
  6. Respond to incidents. Road accidents, lost devices, lost records, threats, assaults, breakdowns and near misses are recorded and reviewed.
  7. Change the plan. Where travel time, fatigue, route risk or repeated delay creates unsafe care, the round is changed rather than expecting workers to compensate.

7. Planning travel that can be done safely

The Service plans rounds with realistic travel time so that workers are not pushed to rush or to drive unsafely to make up time. Travel time is treated as part of the working day. Where travel cannot realistically be done in the time allowed, the round is changed.

8. Driving on the Service's business

A worker who drives for the Service:

The Service checks driving licences and business-use insurance on a stated cadence and keeps a record.

9. Travelling on foot or by public transport

Where workers travel on foot, by bicycle or by public transport, the Service considers their personal safety, especially after dark, as part of the lone-working risk assessment. Routes, lighting and waiting points are taken into account, and workers know how to raise a concern.

10. Protecting records and devices in transit

Workers often carry care records and a work device between homes. The Service:

11. Breakdowns, delays and not being able to reach a visit

The Service tells workers what to do if they break down, are delayed, or cannot reach a visit, including how to contact the office or on-call so that the person's care can be covered (see the visit scheduling, missed and late visits policy). A worker does not drive unsafely to make up lost time.

12. Road traffic accidents

A worker involved in a road traffic accident while working follows the law at the scene, gets help for anyone injured, and reports the accident to the Service as soon as it is safe to do so. The Service records it and reviews whether anything about the round or the journey contributed.

13. Expenses

The Service states how it pays for mileage or travel costs and how workers claim them, so that the arrangement is clear and fair. (The Service completes its own travel-pay terms here.)

14. Records and register links

The Service keeps a record of driving checks, travel risks and mobile-working incidents. The record should include:

Travel incidents that affect care are linked to the incident register. Lost records or devices are assessed under the data-breach process. Repeated delay, unsafe routing, worker fatigue or high-risk travel routes are reviewed through the risk register and improvement-actions register.

15. Training and supervision

Workers must be trained on safe travel, driving while fit, mobile-device security, records in transit, lone-working escalation, late-visit escalation and what to do after an accident, breakdown, threat or lost device. Supervisors use spot checks, supervision and rota review to check that travel time is realistic and workers are not being pressured into unsafe travel.

16. Audit cadence

The Service checks, on a stated cadence, that:

The Registered Manager reviews the results and records the improvement actions that follow.

17. Sources and further reading

This template is based on CQC's guidance for providers and managers, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, and other topic-specific legislation and guidance listed below. It is a starting point for adaptation, not a substitute for legal, clinical, HR, safeguarding or specialist professional advice.

18. Related reading

19. When to seek further advice

Seek specialist advice where the issue involves serious harm, safeguarding, deprivation of liberty, restraint, children, professional misconduct, controlled drugs, radiation, termination of pregnancy, infection outbreak, water safety, employment dismissal, DBS barring referral, or regulatory enforcement.

20. Document control

Version Date Author Changes
v1.1 2026-07-12 Verivius (sample) Added roles, travel and mobile-working procedure, record fields, register links, training and supervision controls.
v1 2026-06-10 Verivius (sample) Conformed to the Verivius policy standard. Original purpose, scope and operational sections preserved and renumbered; statutory anchor, verbatim regulation quotes, plain-English summary, sources, advice and document-control blocks added.

This sample policy template was issued by Verivius. It is a template, not a substitute for legal advice or the tenant's own policy-development process. Where this template and live law or regulator guidance diverge, the live source wins.

What good looks like here

Written from an ex-CQC inspector's chair, but the point is safe, well-led care your team can stand behind. Each row shows what strong evidence looks like, what thin evidence looks like, and where the expectation comes from.

In home care the round is the service, and the driving between visits is not overhead wrapped around the care. It is what decides whether someone is helped up before their skin breaks down, whether medicines are given near the time they were prescribed for, and whether the worker at the door is calm or already an hour behind. When travel time is planned optimistically the pressure lands in two places at once: on the road, where a tired worker drives faster than they should to protect the next person's visit, and in the home, where the visit is quietly trimmed at the end because the next one is already late. The records and the work phone travel with that same pressure, so a folder left on a car seat or a handset lost in a rush is both a possible personal data breach and a signal that the round was never realistic. Reviewing an accident by asking what the journey and the rota contributed, rather than only what the driver did wrong, is what turns a one-off into a fixed round. A service that keeps driving documents current, travel time honest and delay patterns visible knows why its visits slip. One that does not usually finds out when somebody is hurt.

  1. The rota builds in realistic travel time, and the round is changed when travel cannot be done safely, so that people are not left with a rushed or shortened visit and workers are not driving to make up lost time.

    Strong evidence: Travel-time concerns recorded by the rota lead and the round or visit affected by travel risk; the audit that rounds are planned with realistic travel time.

    Weak evidence: The rota shows visits running back to back with no travel gap at all, or the same flat travel allowance dropped between every pair of visits regardless of distance, parking or the time of day. Travel-time concerns reach the coordinator by phone and are never written down, and the same round is flagged as impossible to finish on time week after week while the only thing that changes is which worker is asked to absorb it.

    What the regulator expects to see. Not a law in itself, but CQC judges you against it, so an inspector will look for it and expect a reason where you depart from it.

  2. Every worker who drives on the Service's business has a licence, business-use motor insurance and an MOT (the annual vehicle roadworthiness test) where needed recorded and in date, checked on a stated cadence rather than assumed.

    Strong evidence: Licence, MOT and business-use insurance check dates held in the driving record, plus any fitness-to-drive declaration or driving restriction.

    Weak evidence: A column ticked "seen" with no date, no expiry and no note of who looked at the document. The commonest gaps are insurance recorded as "insured" with nobody confirming the policy actually covers business use, licences photocopied at induction and never looked at again so an endorsement or revocation since then still reads as valid on file, and an MOT expiry that passed months ago with the worker still rostered to drive. The re-check interval itself is a Verivius default rather than a statutory one, but having no interval at all is what leaves an uninsured vehicle, or a driver who has since lost their licence, out on the round.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

  3. A lost record or device is treated as a possible personal data breach and reported at once, not quietly replaced.

    Strong evidence: Lost record or lost device entry in the travel record and whether a data-breach record was opened, reviewed by the data protection lead or nominated manager.

    Weak evidence: A lost phone or missing care folder appears only as an equipment replacement in the office diary, logged as "device lost, new one issued". There is no record of what personal information was on it, nothing showing the data protection lead or nominated manager considered whether it was a personal data breach, and no assessment of the risk to the people whose details were in the folder. The loss surfaces at the next supervision rather than at once.

    A legal duty. This comes from legislation that applies to your service, so meeting it is not optional. The exact provision is cited beneath the badge.

    UK GDPR Articles 33(1) and 33(5)

  4. A worker who is unfit to drive (through tiredness, illness or medication) stops, and fatigue and repeated-delay pressure are captured and acted on rather than overridden to hold the round together.

    Strong evidence: Fitness-to-drive declaration or driving restriction recorded; repeated delay, worker fatigue or high-risk travel routes reviewed through the risk register and improvement-actions register.

    Weak evidence: A fitness-to-drive declaration signed once at induction and never revisited after a new diagnosis, a new medication or a run of long days. Fatigue appears in supervision notes as a sympathetic comment but never as a risk entry with an owner and a review date, and there is no single recorded occasion where a worker stopped, said they were not fit to drive, and the visit was covered by someone else. The declaration and its review interval are Verivius defaults; the duty not to drive while unfit sits on the driver under road traffic law.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

  5. A road traffic accident on Service business is recorded and reviewed for whether the round or journey contributed, not treated as the worker's private matter.

    Strong evidence: Accident or near-miss entry with the immediate action taken and who was told, and the review of whether anything about the round or journey contributed.

    Weak evidence: The accident sits in the worker's personnel file or with the insurer and nowhere in the service's own records. The entry names the vehicle damage but not whether visits were missed or who told the people waiting, and there is no line asking whether the route, the time of day, the weather or the pressure to catch up played a part. Near misses are absent altogether because no vehicle was damaged.

    Our recommended baseline. Not a legal or regulatory requirement, but a sensible standard we suggest where the rules leave the detail to you. Adapt it to your service.

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Last verified 20 July 2026

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Last reviewed 10 June 2026