Fuel and maintenance records in the municipal vehicle fleet: legislation and audit

The Motor Vehicles Law No. 237 brings municipalities and their affiliated organisations within its scope through Article 1. Article 2 excludes tractors, water tankers and all types of motorised agricultural and construction machinery from the Law's scope. Under Article 7, it is the rule that institutions meet their vehicle needs through service procurement; under Article 10, municipalities and their affiliated organisations acquire vehicles by decision of their own councils.

Article 12 of the Law provides that the principles and procedures for supplying fuel, oil and repair work shall be determined by the President, so that official vehicles are used without waste and in line with budgetary resources. Article 13 makes the sale of vehicles conditional on their economic life having ended or their service purpose no longer existing. Article 16 provides for imprisonment for those who use vehicles for purposes other than those for which they were allocated or for personal business, as well as for those who replace a vehicle on the grounds that it has completed its economic life while it remains fit for use. These provisions make it necessary to show, through records, what job a vehicle was used for and when it ceased to be economical.

Presidential Circular No. 2024/7 on Austerity Measures, published in the Official Gazette of 17 May 2024, explicitly includes municipalities, their affiliated organisations, and the unions, establishments and enterprises they have founded within its scope. Under the Circular, no new vehicles will be acquired for a period of 3 years; vehicles needed for defence and security services, and ambulances and fire engines, may be acquired in urgent and compulsory cases. Vehicles that have completed their economic life will be disposed of, and vehicles used through service procurement will not be re-leased at the end of the contract term without permission.

The Circular's most important provision in terms of records is as follows: vehicle expenses will be recorded regularly by licence plate according to expense type, and spending authorities will regularly monitor each vehicle's operating hours, route, average fuel consumption, maintenance costs and driver performance. The Circular also states that the Public Fleet Management System developed by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance will be rolled out in stages to all public institutions, and that in administrations brought within the system's scope, vehicles not registered in the Public Fleet Information System will not be used. For municipalities, in situations under the Circular requiring permission, permission is obtained from the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change. Under the Circular, institutions are required to enter data and reports on austerity measures into the Austerity Measures Information System developed by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance; producing this data from an expense record not kept by licence plate is difficult.

Article 34 of the Highway Traffic Law No. 2918 requires that motor vehicle inspections be carried out within the periods specified in the regulation, and makes driving a vehicle that has not been inspected subject to an administrative fine. Article 14 of the Regulation on the Opening, Operation and Inspection of Vehicle Inspection Stations, dated 6 January 2021, sets out the periods: private and official cars are inspected at the end of their first three years and every two years thereafter; rubber-tyred tractors at the end of their first three years and every three years thereafter; and all other motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers at the end of their first year and every year thereafter. Most municipal vehicles, such as waste collection trucks, fall into this last group.

Inspection is the determination, at certain intervals, of a vehicle's compliance with technical requirements; keeping the vehicle in working order during the periods in between depends on periodic maintenance. For vehicles carrying waste, Article 8 of the Waste Management Regulation further requires municipalities to keep records of these vehicles, set up a vehicle tracking system, and submit the records to the Ministry and the provincial directorate upon request.

The Turkish Court of Accounts Law No. 6085 defines the Court's audit as regularity audit and performance audit. Regularity audit covers the compliance with legislation of transactions relating to public administrations' revenues, expenses and assets, the reliability of financial reports and statements, and financial management and internal control systems. Vehicle and fuel records may be the subject of each of these three headings.

Some of the 2024 municipal audit reports submitted to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in October 2025 contain concrete findings on this subject. These reports state, for example, that the use of fuel issued to vehicles from the municipal depot was tracked using electronic spreadsheets, that fuel was issued to vehicles without documentation being prepared, making it impossible to determine how much fuel was taken per vehicle, and that depot fill levels were measured by hand. The reports assess that it is in the administration's interest for stock tracking to be carried out with a system suitable for control and verification.

Other reports found that, because vehicle leasing was carried out separately by each unit, sound and complete data could not be obtained on fuel supply, usage status, the manner of procurement, and maintenance and repair processes; and that some vehicles had not been included in the fuel automation system.

Read together, the legislation and the audit findings show that keeping the following records for each vehicle in a single place, by licence plate, both meets legal obligations and makes cost control possible.

When these records are kept together, unusual increases in a vehicle's fuel consumption per kilometre, frequently breaking-down vehicles, and vehicles that have completed their economic life can be identified on a documented basis. Tracking leased and owned vehicles in the same order makes it possible to produce, from a single source, both the expense record by licence plate required by the Circular and the documents requested in Turkish Court of Accounts audits. In structures where units track their vehicles separately, different figures are given for the same question. Keeping the record at the moment of refuelling or maintenance, and in the field, reduces the risk of error and omission compared with tables compiled retrospectively at month end.