The questions worth asking a mobile supplier before they touch a single car fall into four groups: what cover they hold, who checks their people, what happens to the keys, and which documents arrive before the first visit. Settle all four in one conversation and most of the risk in the relationship is handled before anyone turns up.
The four groups break down like this:
- Insurance — the level of public liability cover and who the certificate actually protects
- People — whether the technicians are DBS-checked and how attendance is recorded
- Keys and access — the full custody chain from handover to return, plus site induction
- Paperwork — COSHH data sheets, risk assessments and method statements produced before day one
The same list applies whether the cars sit in a business park in Guildford or on a street in Kingston upon Thames. The questions do not change; only the postcode does.
What insurance should a mobile supplier hold?
Public liability insurance is the first question because it is the one that protects you when something goes wrong on your premises. Ask for the certificate before day one, check the level of cover, and confirm the policy covers work carried out on a third-party site rather than only at the supplier’s own address. MMCC carries £1 million of public liability insurance as standard, and the certificate is presented during procurement rather than produced on request after something has already gone wrong.
When you look at the certificate, check three things: the level of cover, the expiry date, and the name of the insured. A certificate that names a different trading entity to the one on your purchase order is a warning sign, because the work may not actually be covered. It is also worth asking whether the supplier carries employer’s liability for any staff they bring onto site — that is their exposure, but it is your site, and a gap there becomes your problem if a technician is injured.
The test is simple: a supplier who cannot produce a certificate before the first visit is a supplier who has never been asked to. Insurance does not make a supplier competent, but it makes a mistake recoverable. For a fleet manager defending a budget and a duty of care, that is the difference between a supplier and a risk.
Who checks the people, not just the paperwork?
The technicians will be moving around your cars and, on some sites, through a building to reach a sign-in point or a key cabinet. The Disclosure and Barring Service issues checks at three levels — Basic, Standard and Enhanced. Basic confirms no unspent convictions, while Standard and Enhanced disclose more. For technicians who will be walking around unattended cars on a corporate site, ask which level the supplier holds, not just whether a check exists. Every MMCC technician is DBS-checked.
Also ask how the supplier records who attended on a given day — a sign-in sheet, a job sheet, or nothing at all. The paper trail is what you fall back on when a car is damaged and the question becomes which visit caused it.
What happens to the keys?
Key custody is the question most fleet managers only think to ask after the first mix-up. Establish the whole chain before the first visit: who collects the keys, who signs them out, who is responsible between handover and return, and what happens when a driver is not there to hand a key over in person. On a staff car park the realistic answer is a documented handover at a reception or sign-in point, not keys left under a windscreen wiper. Ask whether the supplier keeps a record of every key movement, because that record is what you produce when a key goes missing and the insurance claim asks for evidence of custody.
Site induction sits next to key custody on the same list. Many corporate locations require a contractor induction before anyone steps onto the property, and a supplier who does not ask about site-specific requirements is a supplier who has not done this kind of work before. Confirm that the supplier completes the induction for each site in advance, rather than turning up and improvising on the day.
Which documents should arrive before the first visit?
A mobile supplier working on corporate sites should be able to hand over three things before day one: COSHH data sheets for every product they use, risk assessments for the work, and method statements setting out how the work is done. COSHH is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, and the data sheet is what tells a health and safety officer exactly what chemicals will be on site and how they are handled. Together the risk assessment and method statement are usually called RAMS, and they are the documents a health and safety officer will ask for first.
A method statement is the document that turns a risk assessment into a plan: it sets out the sequence of work, the plant and equipment used, the PPE worn, and the first-aid and emergency arrangements. A supplier who hands over a risk assessment without a method statement has done half the job, because the assessment says what could go wrong and the method statement says how the work is controlled.
MMCC’s waterless process matters here because it changes what you are agreeing to let onto your site. Because the work is designed to avoid trade effluent, no wash water runs into your drainage system. That is a question worth putting to any supplier, because it determines whether you are inviting a car valeting service or a small waste stream onto your premises. The full document set sits in the toolkit, and the fleet FAQ answers the procurement questions in one place.
How should a mobile supplier get paid?
How a supplier accepts payment tells you a lot about how their back office runs. If the only option is a card taken over the phone, the accounts department spends its time reconciling individual transactions. MMCC accepts BACS, bank transfer and purchase orders. BACS is the standard for invoiced business work, and a purchase order system lets accounts match the invoice to an approved spend before it is paid — which means the spend sits inside your normal approval process rather than being expensed afterwards.
What does a supplier’s paperwork look like once it is organised?
The questions above start to produce a single answer when the paperwork is held in one place rather than scattered across email threads. The Fleet Insight Platform, served as a manager dashboard per account and described on the Corporate page, includes a Procurement & Compliance module and a Toolkit & Compliance module, so the insurance certificate, COSHH sheets, RAMS and equipment list sit together. The condition side runs alongside it: every car gets a 20-point Vehicle Health Check aligned to the BVRLA Fair Wear and Tear framework, and the resulting records are GDPR-compliant and exportable. None of this is hard to ask for, and all of it should be.
Fleet managers can settle insurance, key custody and compliance documents for their own sites through a Fleet Readiness Audit.