The agreement, announced yesterday (13 February), sees the two organisations working together to pull in lorries, vans, buses and coaches on the region’s motorways while sharing automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) data and other intelligence in real time.
The aim is to improve road safety and use public funds more effectively, and follows a successful trial in the same area.
Either Highways England or DVSA can now bring vehicles into sites for DVSA examiners to check for issues such as drivers’ hours offences, mechanical defects, overloading and load security issues.
DVSA director of enforcement Marian Kitson said: “The main winner here is road safety... It makes perfect sense for those with similar skills, resources and goals to support each other in this way.
“This partnership means we have a wider network of stopper vehicles to hunt down that minority of rogue operators who put profit before safety.”
DVSA has delegated its stopping warrant to Highways England for this partnership, which means that failure to stop for either a Highways England or DVSA vehicle could result in court action or attention from the traffic commissioner.