Fleet Desk
How Fleet Desk works
How the Fleet Desk reads the bulletins, verifies a rise in authorised vehicles, labels an account and handles a dispute. Plain words, version stated.
How it works, in plain words
This page says how Fleet Desk decides what to send and how it describes it, so any line in a briefing can be traced back to a rule. Every briefing links here. We do not publish the exact weights, and the evidence record attached to each email shows how every line was scored.
Method version 3, in force from 11 September 2026.
What is read
Every Applications and Decisions bulletin for the seven traffic areas in England and Wales, in the week it publishes, and the DVSA operator licence register as a baseline. Scotland is read and held back until a separate publication-law review.
What makes one episode
Company, licence, operating centre and the underlying application make one episode. A later stage, a repeated publication or a Schedule 4 transfer updates that episode rather than counting again. This is why an operator with four sites in one application is one account, not four.
The four classes
Capacity expansion, where the licence total is verified to have risen. Site expansion, a site the operator has not used before or more vehicles at one it already uses, without a verified rise in the total. Network change, additions and removals in the same period. Licence transfer, an administrative stage that is not evidence of growth.
What verified means
A bulletin prints the authorisation after the change and never the figure before. A rise is verified only when a DVSA register snapshot dated before the bulletin gives the earlier figure. Without that, the change is a site change and is labelled as one.
Growth strength and activity, apart
Growth strength weighs a verified increase and its size, a new licence, a site the operator has not used before, the stage and the recency. Activity weighs sites changing, additions with removals and transfers. A business can be active without growing, and the two never mix. No numeric score is shown. The drivers behind each label are.
The labels
High priority, Worth watching, Network change, Licence transfer, Granted and live, Low-confidence signal. High priority needs strong evidence, not many entries.
What is never said
That an operator has bought vehicles, that a site is new, that an application will be granted, or what an operator intends. "Authorised up to" is the only form of the vehicle figure. "A site this operator has not used before" is the only form of a new operating centre.
People
No director, partner or transport manager is named. Correspondence addresses are never used. Operating centre addresses only. Operators that cannot be matched to an active limited company are left out, and the number left out is logged with every briefing.
If a line is disputed
Write to hello@harriersignals.co.uk with the account name. The source is rechecked promptly, the item is held while it is checked, and every subscriber who received a material error is told.
Change log
Version 3, 11 September 2026. A rise is scored against the licence figure before it, so ten more vehicles on a fleet of twenty counts for more than ten on a fleet of four hundred. Priority became a tier of its own beside the change class, so a network change can be High. Start here takes only the accounts that clear the bar, and the thresholds were re-measured on the three weeks to 11 September. Version 2, 4 September 2026. The episode model, the four classes, growth strength and activity scored apart, the weekly window, no numeric score shown. Version 1, 3 September 2026, a ranked four-week list, withdrawn the next day.
