Lex Vehicle Leasing is urging the relevant authorities to make it clear who is responsible for the display of no smoking stickers in company vehicles.

The smoking ban in vans went live in Scotland on the March 23 and Lex has had an incident where a customer’s driver was caught smoking whilst driving by the police.

He was let off with a warning, because he was in a non-Lex daily rental vehicle which didn’t have a no smoking sticker placed inside the cab, but potentially could have been fined.

Lex believes it is the driver’s employer that is ultimately responsible for displaying a sticker to advise them as to their responsibilities when at the wheel of a company van. But in a situation like this when the driver is in a rental vehicle, Lex is concerned the whole process could become a nightmare to administer when a no smoking ban is rolled out to other drivers.

“Before the legislation is rolled out to other drivers it must be clearer to both fleets and service suppliers such as Lex and daily rental providers,” said Barclay McFarlane, operations manager at Lex.

“Even though we are not obliged to do so by law, we have taken the cautious approach by providing a sticker reinforcing a no smoking ban in the vehicle with all new vans on our fleet, not just those in Scotland” he added.

Lex is then allowing fleets to make their own decision as to whether they place the sticker inside their vehicles. Stickers can be ordered from Lex to enable fleets who want to put them in all their vans retrospectively.

“Having experienced this one major problem, we would recommend that fleets get a sticker in place in all vehicles as soon as possible to meet their Duty of Care obligations, even if company cars don't get included in the forthcoming new smoking guidelines,” said McFarlane.