The 28-day rule: what you actually have to tell the Traffic Commissioner

Most operators know, roughly, that some things have to be reported to the Traffic Commissioner. Far fewer could name the full list — and fewer still realise how ordinary some of the notifiable events actually are. An HSE improvement notice that has nothing to do with vehicles. A director stepping down from a company that's barely changed at all.

Miss one, and the problem usually isn't the original event. It's that failing to notify it is treated as a breach of trust in its own right — and trust is the entire basis on which the Traffic Commissioner lets you keep operating.

Where the duty actually comes from

Every operator licence carries a set of undertakings signed at grant — legal promises to the regulator, not just good intentions. One of those undertakings is an ongoing duty to notify the Office of the Traffic Commissioner, in writing, within 28 days of specified events. It sits in the licence document itself and is reinforced by the Traffic Commissioners' Statutory Document No. 1 on Good Repute and Fitness, and — for convictions and offences — by Schedule 2 of the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995.

Miss the window and you're not just late with some paperwork. You're in breach of a licence condition, which is itself a matter the Traffic Commissioner can act on — regardless of how minor the underlying event was.

The list most operators underestimate

Changes to the legal entity. A change in the legal form of the business — sole trader to limited company, a merger, a change of company name — must be notified within 28 days. A change in shareholding alone only needs reporting if it changes who's actually in control.

Changes to directors. Any appointment or retirement of a director must be notified within 28 days. This one catches people out because it feels administrative rather than significant — but a change of directors is not treated as a change of ownership, and it's notifiable regardless.

Change of address. Correspondence address, registered office, or operating centre — even a move next door counts. The Traffic Commissioner needs to be satisfied the operator maintains an "effective and stable establishment," and an address change goes straight to that test.

Change of maintenance provider or arrangements. If you switch garages, bring maintenance in-house, or otherwise change how vehicles are inspected and serviced, that's a notifiable change to the arrangements specified on the licence.

Financial standing issues. Anything that could cause a shortfall against the financial standing requirement — and, more seriously, bankruptcy, liquidation, administration or a company voluntary arrangement — must be notified, in some cases before the relevant order is even made, not within 28 days after.

Convictions and fixed penalty notices. This is wider than most people expect. It covers relevant convictions of the operator, its directors, partners, employees and agents — not just the company itself — and fixed penalty notices issued to drivers or anyone else connected with the operation.

Anything affecting repute or fitness — even if it isn't unlawful. The legal test here is deliberately broad. The Court of Appeal has confirmed that conduct doesn't need to be criminal to be relevant; it only needs some connection to fitness to hold a licence. This is the catch-all that trips up operators who reason "it wasn't actually illegal, so it can't be notifiable."

Anything affecting the transport manager's repute or competence. Where a TM's good repute or professional competence is called into question, that's notifiable in its own right, separate from the operator's.

Loss of access to any vehicle on the licence. If you no longer have access to at least one specified vehicle, that's a notifiable event.

The one that genuinely surprises people — and one we checked directly with the regulator

One item keeps coming up as something operators had no idea was notifiable at all.

HSE improvement notices. Following an update to the statutory guidance, operators must notify the OTC if served with an improvement notice by an enforcement body such as the HSE — even where it has nothing directly to do with vehicles or drivers' hours.

A related point worth flagging on parking — confirmed directly by the OTC. Schedule 2 doesn't name "parking offences" as a category at all. What it actually lists are broad heads — offences relating to plating and test certificates, maintenance, overloading, driver licensing, and drivers' hours — plus a general trigger that catches any offence, of any kind, resulting in a fine above level 4 on the standard scale (currently £2,500) or a significant unpaid work order. A parking conviction only becomes a "notifiable conviction" under Schedule 2 if it happens to meet one of those general triggers, which in practice is rare for an ordinary parking matter.

That's a narrower route in than the phrase "notifiable convictions" might suggest, and it's worth being precise about it — this is a distinction we put directly to the Office of the Traffic Commissioner rather than relying on secondary commentary. Where parking realistically becomes relevant is a different, broader duty entirely: the general obligation to notify anything affecting good repute, separate from the specific Schedule 2 list. The OTC confirmed there's no published guidance stating that a routine Parking Charge Notice — private company or council civil penalty, with no conviction attached — is automatically notifiable on its own. But a pattern of unpaid charges, repeated enforcement action, or court judgments arising from parking could still engage that broader good repute duty, even without ever touching Schedule 2 at all.

The OTC's practical steer, in their own words, is straightforward: if in doubt, tell them anyway. A one-off PCN paid and forgotten is unlikely to be relevant to anything. A drawer full of unpaid ones building into a genuine pattern of enforcement is a different story — one worth notifying even though no single ticket ever touches the formal Schedule 2 list.

This won't individually sink a licence. But an operator who assumes parking-related offences are beneath the threshold is an operator who's drawn the "repute" line in the wrong place — and that gap tends to surface at exactly the wrong moment, usually during a wider Traffic Commissioner review.

Why "it was only small" isn't a defence

The recurring theme across all of these is that the size of the underlying event rarely matters as much as operators assume. A single director resigning from an otherwise stable, compliant business is a minor administrative fact. Not reporting it within 28 days is a breach of an undertaking given personally to the regulator — and that's judged on its own terms, separate from whatever the change actually was.

This is also where the "duty of candour" concept matters. The Traffic Commissioners' general expectation is that operators are open and transparent, and if there's genuine doubt about whether something needs reporting, the safer course is always to write and let the OTC decide — not to quietly conclude it probably doesn't count.

What happens if you don't notify

Consequences scale with what's been missed and how it comes to light, but they can include a formal written explanation request, a regulatory investigation, or a direction to a preliminary hearing or full public inquiry — the most serious regulatory forum a transport operator can face, held in public and open to press. Persistent or serious failures to notify can also, on their own, be treated as evidence against good repute, independent of the underlying event.

Where this sits in your compliance system

On audit this cuts across several parts of the framework — correct legal entity (section 1.1), notifiable changes (section 1.5), and transport manager competence (section 2.1) — but the underlying question is always the same: does the operator have a documented, understood process for spotting a notifiable event and getting it reported within 28 days? Most operators who fall down here don't do so through bad faith. They simply don't have a system that flags a director change, a new maintenance contract, or a parking ticket as "this needs telling to the OTC" — because nobody in the business has ever mapped out the full list.

Get that mapped out once, put someone in charge of watching for it, and the 28-day rule stops being a trap and becomes exactly what it's meant to be: routine housekeeping with the regulator, rather than a fundamental breach of trust waiting to happen.

If you'd like your notification processes checked as part of a full compliance audit, that's exactly what we do. Get in touch at enquiries@ukfleetaudit.co.uk.

References

Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act 1995, c. 23, Schedule 2. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/23/schedule/2 (Accessed: 21 July 2026).

JMW Solicitors (2026) Reporting to the Traffic Commissioner: a guide for commercial transport operators. Available at: https://www.jmw.co.uk/blog/road-transport/reporting-to-the-traffic-commissioner-a-guide-for-commercial-transport-operators (Accessed: 21 July 2026).

Office of the Traffic Commissioner, North West of England (2026) Email correspondence with UK Fleet Audit Ltd re: notifiable changes — parking contraventions, Matthew Gibson, Policy and Business Support Manager, 19 August.

Senior Traffic Commissioner for Great Britain (2025) Statutory Document No. 1: Good Repute and Fitness, Version 18.0. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1068210/Stat_Doc_1_Good_Repute_and_Fitness_-_Version_14.0.pdf (Accessed: 21 July 2026).

Senior Traffic Commissioner for Great Britain (2026) Senior Traffic Commissioner Statutory Document Summaries. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/senior-traffic-commissioner-statutory-document-summaries (Accessed: 21 July 2026).

Smith Bowyer Clarke (2024) Are you aware of your notification requirements on your operator's licence? Available at: https://smithbowyerclarke.co.uk/are-you-aware-of-your-notification-requirements-on-your-operators-licence/ (Accessed: 21 July 2026).

Weightmans (2025) Notification of offences to the Traffic Commissioner. Available at: https://www.weightmans.com/insights/notification-of-offences-to-the-traffic-commissioner/ (Accessed: 21 July 2026).