GB Vehicle Operator Licence & Fleet Growth Signals

Detect what changed in official Great Britain vehicle operator licence data since your previous successful run.

This Actor is designed for repeat monitoring. It is not a generic operator-directory scraper. It keeps a persistent snapshot of the official public register and emits one Dataset record per meaningful change.

What this Actor does

On each run the Actor downloads the official Traffic Commissioners / DVSA bulk CSV files, normalizes duplicate licence rows, compares the current register with the previous successful snapshot, writes change signals to the Dataset, and only then commits the new snapshot.

The most commercially useful signal is VEHICLE_AUTHORITY_INCREASED, for example:

Fleet authority increased from 8 to 20 vehicles

That can be useful as a fleet-growth trigger for commercial vehicle sales, telematics, insurance, fuel / charging, maintenance, tyres, logistics suppliers, and market intelligence.

Who it is for

• commercial vehicle and trailer suppliers
• fleet service and telematics providers
• fleet insurance teams
• fuel and charging providers
• maintenance and tyre suppliers
• logistics-sector sales teams
• fleet market intelligence teams

Official data source

The Actor uses the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency / Traffic Commissioners goods and public service vehicle operator licence records published through the UK government data catalogue. The source is a set of public CSV files covering Great Britain and is described by the publisher as updated weekly, every Sunday.

Source: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/2a67d1ee-8f1b-43a3-8bc6-e8772d162a3c/traffic-commissioners-goods-and-public-service-vehicle-operator-licence-records

The government catalogue marks the dataset as available under the UK Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0. Review the source and OGL terms for your use case.

No proxy, browser, Playwright, or Puppeteer is used.

Signal types

Implemented signals:

• NEW_OPERATOR
• OPERATOR_REMOVED
• LICENCE_STATUS_CHANGED
• VEHICLE_AUTHORITY_INCREASED
• VEHICLE_AUTHORITY_DECREASED
• TRAILER_AUTHORITY_INCREASED
• TRAILER_AUTHORITY_DECREASED
• OPERATING_CENTRE_ADDED
• OPERATING_CENTRE_REMOVED
• LICENCE_TYPE_CHANGED
• OPERATOR_NAME_CHANGED
• COMPANY_NUMBER_CHANGED
• ADDRESS_CHANGED

The official licence number is the primary entity key. Operator names are never used as the identity key.

First-run baseline behavior

The first successful run creates a baseline snapshot and emits zero change signals. Existing operators are not emitted as NEW_OPERATOR.

Expected sequence:

1. first run: baseline, 0 signals
2. same source again: 0 signals
3. source changed: relevant signals
4. same changed source again: 0 signals

Set baselineOnly: true to deliberately refresh the baseline without emitting differences.

Example input

{
  "mode": "live",
  "signalTypes": ["VEHICLE_AUTHORITY_INCREASED", "LICENCE_STATUS_CHANGED"],
  "postcodePrefixes": ["B", "CV"],
  "minVehicleIncrease": 5,
  "maxItems": 500
}

For a first-run demonstration that produces representative change records without reading or changing the production snapshot, use { "mode": "sample" }. This is also the Store example run.

Available filters include signalTypes, licenceStatuses, licenceTypes, postcodePrefixes, companyNumbers, and licenceNumbers.

maxItems limits Dataset output only. The Actor still downloads, validates, normalizes, and snapshots the complete official source so that later runs do not create false changes.

Example output

{
  "signalType": "VEHICLE_AUTHORITY_INCREASED",
  "severity": "HIGH",
  "detectedAt": "2026-09-13T00:00:00.000Z",
  "licenceNumber": "OK1234567",
  "operatorName": "EXAMPLE LOGISTICS LIMITED",
  "companyNumber": "01234567",
  "licenceStatus": "lsts_valid",
  "licenceType": "Standard National",
  "operatingCentre": "EXAMPLE DEPOT ...",
  "postcode": "AB1 2CD",
  "previousValue": 8,
  "currentValue": 20,
  "previousVehicleAuthority": 8,
  "currentVehicleAuthority": 20,
  "previousTrailerAuthority": 2,
  "currentTrailerAuthority": 2,
  "signalSummary": "Fleet authority increased from 8 to 20 vehicles",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/2a67d1ee-8f1b-43a3-8bc6-e8772d162a3c/traffic-commissioners-goods-and-public-service-vehicle-operator-licence-records"
}

Severity

HIGH is used for material fleet-authority changes, operator removal, and serious status changes such as suspended / revoked / cancelled / curtailed states when those values appear in the source. Smaller fleet changes and operating-centre changes are generally MEDIUM. Minor metadata changes are LOW.

Severity is a deterministic prioritization aid, not a predictive risk score.

Scheduling recommendation

Because the official register is published weekly, schedule the Actor weekly after the Sunday source refresh. More frequent runs are safe but will usually produce no new signals until the official source changes.

Data freshness

Freshness is limited by the official DVSA / Traffic Commissioners publication schedule. The Actor does not claim real-time changes or instant alerts.

Snapshot safety and idempotency

The persistent snapshot is stored separately from Dataset output. Processing order is:

fetch → normalize → validate → diff → Dataset output → summary → snapshot commit

The snapshot is not updated when a source request fails, parsing fails, required source fields disappear, a stored snapshot is incompatible, the current or regional source count collapses implausibly, or Dataset/summary output fails.

The snapshot is gzip-compressed before it is stored. Re-running against an unchanged official source emits no duplicate signals.

Known limitations

• The Actor can only detect changes represented in the official bulk CSV files.
• Operating centres are identified by normalized official address text because the public CSV does not expose a separate stable operating-centre ID in the fields used here.
• Cosmetic address/name formatting is normalized to reduce false positives, but substantive official text changes can still create metadata signals.
• OPERATOR_REMOVED means a licence disappeared from the official weekly bulk register; it does not infer why.
• The Actor does not predict sales intent, business risk, or future fleet growth.

Compute / storage behavior

Each run downloads all regional official CSV files so the comparison snapshot remains complete. Filters and maxItems affect output only, not source ingestion or snapshot completeness.

A named Apify Key-value Store persists the compressed normalized snapshot across runs. The default Dataset contains only emitted change signals. The run's default Key-value Store receives an OUTPUT summary with current/previous entity counts, signal counts, mode, warnings, and snapshot status.