Our Remote Enforcement Office (REO) trial is coming to an end. This office, based in the Western Traffic Area, provides a more streamlined enforcement service that poses less of a burden to compliant operators and frees up resource to focus on serious and serial law breakers. Over the last 9 months this office has, by all measures, been very successful.
The REO is a more efficient method of enforcement which takes in to account the whole picture of an operator. Rather than focussing on the immediate encounter, the REO uses enriched data to recognise the overall compliance culture of the operator. This means that we can issue advice and guidance where appropriate, reducing the burden of enforcement on compliant operators, while freeing up valuable enforcement resource to concentrate on the serious and serially non-compliant.
One example of this is how, rather than a personal visit to an operator’s premises, the REO requests compliance records and other data electronically. This allows the operator to provide the information at a time convenient to them and saves a great deal of time and money.
Operators who we know to be generally compliant, and who may have made an innocent mistake, will find that the REO recognises their compliant culture and provides the support they need to put things right – avoiding more expensive and burdensome enforcement action.
The REO is an important part of DVSA’s transformation of our enforcement processes. We are taking a careful look at the results of the trial, to make sure that the lessons we’ve learned are included in our future thinking about enforcement.