OCRS explained for bus and coach operators. What moves the number.

OCRS is the number DVSA uses to decide whose vehicles get pulled in at the roadside. It stands for operator compliance risk score, and DVSA’s OCRS guidance is plain about what it is for: the higher your score, the more likely your vehicles are to be inspected. A low score does not mean you will never be stopped. It means your record is not the reason you were picked.

For a PSV operator the score is worth understanding properly, because the events that feed it are the same events a Traffic Commissioner reads. OCRS on its own does not take a licence away. What sits behind it can.

One score per licence, in three parts

OCRS is worked out for each operator licence, not for each vehicle. If you hold licences in two traffic areas, each has its own score. Each licence gets three numbers:

• Roadworthiness, built from annual tests, roadside inspections, DVSA fleet assessments at your premises and desk-based assessments of your records.
• Traffic, built from roadside checks and prosecutions for things like drivers’ hours, tachographs and weight, plus the same fleet and desk-based assessments.
• Combined, which puts the two together for targeting.

DVSA calls each test, check or assessment an event. An event where nothing is found is a clear event. An event where a defect or offence is found earns points, and the more serious the finding, the more points it earns.

How the score is worked out

Your base score is your total defect or offence points divided by your total number of encounters, over a rolling three-year period. That makes it an average, and that is the most useful thing to understand about OCRS. A bad event adds to the top of the sum. Every clear event adds to the bottom of it.

DVSA’s own worked example for the combined score: 200 roadworthiness points plus 150 traffic points makes 350, from four roadworthiness events and two traffic events. 350 divided by 6 is 58.33, which puts that operator in red.

Points for roadworthiness findings

Prohibitions are split by whether they take effect immediately or are delayed, and by whether the defect is on tyres, brakes or steering. An S mark, which the examiner adds when the defect points to a failure of maintenance, doubles the points.

An annual test failure for tyres, brakes or steering adds 50 points, and a failure for anything else adds 25. A pass is a clear event. A DVSA fleet assessment that finds your maintenance unsatisfactory adds 50 points to the roadworthiness score, or 100 if DVSA reports it to the Traffic Commissioner. An unsatisfactory desk-based assessment adds 25 and a mostly satisfactory one adds 9.

On the traffic side, offences run from 12.5 points for a band 0 offence, the least serious, up to 300 for band 5. A DVSA operator prosecution case carries 300 points plus 100 for each offence. If you are prosecuted, the points count from the date of the prosecution, not the date of the offence.

The bands

The base score decides your band. The thresholds are different for each of the three scores.

Grey means DVSA has no data on you for that period, typically a new licence or an operator who has had no dealings with DVSA in three years. You can have a score in one category and nothing in the other. Blue is for operators in the DVSA earned recognition scheme, who sit outside OCRS altogether. DVSA says it can change the points, the weightings and the band thresholds whenever it needs to, so check the guidance rather than relying on figures you wrote down years ago.

How long an event counts

Every event stays in the calculation for three years and then drops out. Its weight falls as it ages: full value for the first year, three quarters in the second, half in the third. An S marked category 1 brake prohibition therefore counts as 400 points for twelve months, 300 for the next twelve and 200 for the last twelve, then disappears.

DVSA re-runs the scores every day, early in the morning. New events, newly added vehicles, the change in weighting as an event ages and events passing the three-year point are all picked up overnight. That last one catches people out. If a run of clean annual tests three years ago has been holding your average down, the score can rise when they drop off, with nothing new having gone wrong.

How OCRS affects roadside targeting

DVSA uses the score to choose which vehicles to inspect. Red operators are more likely to be stopped, and green operators less likely, but nobody is exempt. When a vehicle is stopped, the examiner may do a quick walkaround and decide a full inspection is not needed, for example because the vehicle is brand new or has just had its annual test or a recent roadside inspection. DVSA calls that a sifted encounter. It is not an event, so it does nothing to your score either way. Being waved through is not a clear check.

Drivers are not told the operator’s band at the roadside unless they can show they own the vehicle, operate it or are named on the licence.

There is a point here that matters for bus and coach fleets in particular. DVSA’s guidance says that if you choose to add your passenger vehicles to your operator licence, their MOT results are included in your roadworthiness score. The Guide to maintaining roadworthiness makes the same point the other way round: clear results offset negative points, so sharing optional test data for PSVs can work in your favour. A well-kept fleet that passes its annual tests is adding clear events every year.

What the score means for your licence

OCRS is a targeting tool, not a sanction. But every prohibition that pushes it up goes further than your score. DVSA’s categorisation of defects notes that DVSA is required by law to send a copy of each prohibition to the relevant Traffic Commissioner. Under section 17 of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981, a prohibition on a vehicle you own or operate is one of the grounds on which a commissioner can revoke or suspend a PSV operator licence or change its conditions.

If DVSA carries out a maintenance investigation, the examiner looks at every roadworthiness prohibition over the most recent of three periods: since your last public inquiry that considered roadworthiness prohibitions, since the last maintenance investigation fleet check, or the last three years. That is set out in the maintenance investigation questions. In other words, the same three-year window that drives OCRS is the window an examiner will read. Our guides on the DVSA maintenance investigation and avoiding a public inquiry go through what happens next.

How to bring the score down

Stop the points at source

Tyres, brakes and steering defects cost twice the points of other defects on the same kind of prohibition, so that is where the effort pays most. The S mark, which doubles the points, is reserved for defects the driver or the maintenance system should have caught. A proper walkaround check every day, and a brake test at every safety inspection, will do more for your score than anything you do in the office.

Investigate every prohibition and test failure

DVSA’s guidance says operators need to make sure failures at test and prohibitions are investigated. Find out why the defect was there, whether the driver or the last inspection should have found it, and what you are changing. Our guide to PG9 prohibitions sets out how to do that.

Put clear events on the record

Because the score is an average, clear events pull it down. Make sure the vehicles on your licence are correct so their annual test passes are counted against the right operator.

Check the report and challenge mistakes

DVSA recommends you check your score regularly, track how it changes, set targets and act when a negative event comes in. If the score looks wrong, check the vehicle registrations on your licence and run your service history reports to see what has been added and removed. Errors in an annual test or a roadside prohibition go through the normal appeal or complaint routes. Anything else goes to operator.reports@dvsa.gov.uk with your licence number, a copy of the report showing the mistake and any supporting documents. DVSA will only talk to someone named for your company on the vehicle operator licensing system, such as a transport manager or director. A pending appeal does not change the score. If it succeeds, DVSA removes the event and works the score out again.

Reading your OCRS report

You get your report through your vehicle operator licensing account. The first page shows your details and a summary of how the score was reached. After that come the events that pushed it up and the ones that pulled it down. The last table lists events removed in the past 90 days, which is usually where the answer is when a score jumps for no obvious reason.

The report is a snapshot, and between reports it is easy to lose track. PSVault keeps its own running reckoning from the roadside encounters you enter off the PG35EC, MOT results and DVSA’s encounter reports, using DVSA’s published points and weightings, and shows it beside DVSA’s last figure. See OCRS tracking for how the forecast works.

A monthly OCRS checklist

1. Pull the current OCRS report from your licensing account on a fixed day each month.
2. Check every vehicle on the licence is yours and that none are missing.
3. Read the new events since last month, good and bad, and note which band each score sits in.
4. Read the removed events table and work out which old events will drop off in the next three months.
5. For every new prohibition or test failure, open an investigation with a named owner and a date.
6. Look at which defect areas keep coming up and feed them into driver briefings and inspection focus.
7. Challenge anything that looks wrong, through the right route, with evidence.