The answer to this one is……”It depends!”
If for example the vehicle is a company car and the company for whom you work are responsible for the insurance, then as long as you and your colleague are both authorised drivers on the company Motor Fleet policy (and you both have the correct licences and permissions to drive the vehicle) then you should be ok to share the driving. You’ll still need to check beforehand though and get confirmation from your admin team – it’s not unusual for Fleet insurers to restrict driving on certain higher powered or more expensive vehicles, say to named drivers only or to drivers over a certain age. If the colleague does not normally drive company cars, then it’s even more important to check before they get behind the wheel. Sometimes in situations like this the Fleet insurer will add the colleague as a temporary authorised driver but depending on the colleague’s experience/driving history they may decide to impose additional terms. This might be an increased excess, or cover reduced to Third Party Only whilst the colleague drives.
If the vehicle is not a company car, there are still a number of things you’ll need to check before the colleague drives :
– if the colleague is likely to need repeated use, is it worth adding the colleague as an Additional Driver on your annual policy? If you decide to do this, make sure you tell the insurer that the colleague requires Business Use.
– if the sharing of the driving is a one-off/unlikely to be regularly repeated, you could direct your colleague towards a temporary insurance policy to cover their use of your vehicle. The good news here is that most short-term insurance providers include Class 1 Business Use in their standard cover – just make sure your colleague checks this before they buy their short-term policy, as sometimes it’s difficult to get a refund if you do realise you’ve made a mistake!
– another possibility is that the colleague has Driving Other Cars (DOC) cover under their own insurance policy. They will need to check this extremely carefully though : as the Car Sharing FAQs section above shows, this cover is not provided universally and when it is provided it usually comes with a lot of strings attached!