DVSA maintenance investigation self-check. Run the questions before an examiner does.

When DVSA opens a maintenance investigation, an examiner goes through your files, looks at some of your vehicles and answers a fixed set of questions about how you keep the fleet roadworthy. The report can end up in front of the Traffic Commissioner. Without a self-check, you find out how you would do once the examiner is already sat in the office. PSVault lets you see the answers first, against your own records, as often as you want.

What a maintenance investigation is

DVSA uses maintenance investigations to check that a licence holder in England, Wales or Scotland has suitable systems, facilities and arrangements in place. The questions are published on GOV.UK. There are 14 sections, covering the operating centre, inspection and maintenance records, driver defect reporting, maintenance facilities, wheel and tyre management, prohibitions, the transport manager and more. For PSV operators, section 9 deals with the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations rather than load security.

Most questions are marked against up to four outcomes: satisfactory, mostly satisfactory, unsatisfactory, or report to the Traffic Commissioners. Unsatisfactory means you have to explain what you will do about it. A report outcome means DVSA sends the visit report, with your explanation, to the Traffic Commissioners. Our guide to the DVSA maintenance investigation goes through each section properly.

What PSVault does with the questions

PSVault runs DVSA’s own question set, in the PSV or HGV form, with the same answers and codes as the examiner’s report. It names the edition it is built on, and a weekly check of GOV.UK flags when DVSA publishes a new one, so the questions can be kept current.

For each question, PSVault fills in what your records show and suggests an answer, with the reason. Nobody has to take that on trust. The office confirms or changes each answer, writes its own assessment and signs the self-check. The suggestion is where the conversation starts, not where it ends.

The evidence it fills in

Almost all of it comes from records you are already keeping in PSVault.

• Records not fully completed. Inspection sheets go through the same examiner-style checks used before signing, so a missing brake test result or a wheel removed with no re-torque booked turns up here.
• Late inspections, each one listed with whether a VOR record covered the gap.
• Forward planning. The guidance expects inspections, annual tests and calibration dates planned at least six months ahead. PSVault checks your planner actually runs that far.
• VOR records, with dates and reasons.
• Walkaround coverage, nil defect reports included, and how defects found by drivers compare with defects found at inspection.
• Gate checks and what they turned up.
• Annual test pass rates compared with the national average, which is the yardstick the examiner uses when looking at test history.
• Re-torques and tyre management.
• Prohibitions and S marks over the last three years.

The comparison between driver defects and inspection defects matters more than people expect. The guidance treats inspections that keep finding things a driver should have reported as a sign that walkaround checks are not working. PSVault’s missed defect tracking puts names and dates against that, so the answer to the driver defect questions is based on evidence rather than a feeling.

Your own fleet check

An examiner does not only read paperwork. They look at vehicles, ideally a mix of types and ages at different points in the inspection and test cycle. The guidance sets a recommended minimum by fleet size:

PSVault picks the vehicles the guidance says to look at, and the office records what an examiner would have found on each one. If you would not want a stranger in a hi-vis under that coach this afternoon, it is better to find out now.

From findings to actions

A self-check that ends up as a PDF in a drawer does nothing. Every finding can become an action with an owner, a due date and a status. Open actions sit on the dashboard, where the office sees them every day. When you run the next self-check, PSVault looks back at the actions from the last one, so you can see what got closed and what slipped.

Each question keeps its outcome from every finished self-check, so you get a trend. If driver defect reporting was mostly satisfactory in the spring and satisfactory by the autumn, you can see it. If records completion keeps sliding, you can see that too. The self-check is built to be repeated every quarter.

The printed report

The self-check prints as a PDF in the report’s own layout and codes. A transport consultant with a read-only login can open it, look at the evidence behind each answer and print it, without being able to change anything. If DVSA does come, you can show what you checked, what you found and what you did about it. Our guide on how to avoid a public inquiry covers why that record matters.

What it does not do

PSVault cannot see what it is not told. If inspections stay on paper and never get entered, or defects are fixed without a record, the self-check is built on gaps. It cannot promise an outcome either. The examiner makes their own assessment, and DVSA has not approved or endorsed PSVault. What you get is the same questions, asked against your own records, while there is still time to put things right.