O-license for goods vehicle converted to accommodation?

Evening all,

Firstly… this isn’t yet another post of someone trying to avoid an O-license. In a bid to not overcomplicate matters, basically:

  • My business supplies and build stages for shows. We spend up to 12 days working on an event site from start to finish.
  • we currently hold an OL for 2 vehicles & 0 trailers.
  • We currently use external hauliers for our larger stages (which fill 4x 45’ curtainsiders)

In a bid to operate safely in the world of COVID-19 this summer, we’re looking at removing the need for off-site accommodation for our build crew on our larger jobs.

We’ve looked at various options for creating individual ‘pods’ in a trailer, plus 2 shower units and a kitchenette. We’ve considered building this into varying sizes of trailer(s), but ultimately we keep coming back to needing to do this in one 45ft box trailer.

Since all 10 accommodation ‘pods’ will have their own external doors, plus 2 doors for the shower units, and further doors for the kitchenette, between the substantial internal work needed and cutting 14 doors into the sides, this is something we obviously need to own!

Basically we would be taking a 45ft artic box trailer, which clearly WAS a goods vehicle, but substantially and permanently changing it into mobile living accommodation.

So, someone mentioned a comment in passing the other day about the trailer becoming exempt… We are already in the process of adding vehicles and trailers onto our OL**, but that comment has set me thinking (and googling) today… What might this specific exemption be?

The vehicle moving it would be on a OL (either our own OL or a haulier’s). We’re not looking to get exemptions on tacho hours, or anything. Above all, this trailer must be safe and moved safely, and we’re not looking to cut corners, and even if it doesn’t need to go on the OL we’d still be putting it through the usually inspections as per our other vehicles.

So, any thoughts? I’ve found some interesting pieces of case law today, which have definitely shown there is something in having a vehicle which is modified and can no longer be used to transport goods, but equally I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the DVSA.

(**The amendments to our OL have attracted one representor, so sadly isn’t as quick a process as we had hoped it would be. Reason for needing to jump on to this now, rather than waiting, is that we only have a matter of 7-8 weeks before this would need to be out on site in use.)