David Hosking, CEO at Tusker, takes a look at the reasons why teachers cannot take advantage of salary sacrifice for cars.

Salary sacrifice for cars is one of the fastest growing employee benefits in the UK right now.  But there is one particular profession that is unfairly excluded from taking advantage of it because of an unintended interpretation of their terms and conditions.

Teachers in England and Wales continue to be excluded from having access to the schemes as they are not specified in the Government’s School Teacher Pay and Conditions Document (STCPD). Other similar benefits such as cycle to work schemes are mentioned and the omission of salary sacrifice car schemes is seemingly unintended.

Tusker has been campaigning on behalf of the fleet industry to have this anomaly corrected in this month’s Budget Report.  Over 1,200 teachers across England and Wales have signed an online petition and 22 MPs from the three main Westminster parties have signed an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons. Tusker recently held a campaign event in Parliament to call for a change to this unfair and apparently unintended national rule, which sixteen MPs from all the main parties attended to show their support.

Teachers have told us that it is extremely unfair that they are excluded from salary sacrifice car schemes and we agree. To improve teacher retention and raise the status of the teaching profession, teachers need to be treated as equals.  We will continue to work with teaching unions and MPs to have this rule changed to end the exclusion of teachers from this popular employee benefit.

Teachers should have access to the same cost savings as other professions.  They should be given the opportunity to save around £1300 a year on their motoring costs along with nurses, accountants, solicitors and sales executives.  At times when wages in teaching are stagnating, this significant annual saving could be a huge improvement to many teachers’ personal finances.

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