The scrappage scheme has been credited with boosting new car sales, after the third successive monthly rise was seen in September.

New car registrations were up 11.4% last month to 367,929 units.

However, fleet sales fell again - by 13.6% - over the month.

Year to date fleet sales are down 25% compared to last year.

Business sales to fleets of less than 25 cars also fell, by 11%, bringing the year to date figures down by almost 30%.

Just 762,851 new cars have gone to fleets so far this year, compared to 1,025,465 over the same period last year.

The figures have brought criticism from ACFO, which says the scheme has failed to help Britain’s businesses which are traditionally responsible for buying at least 60% of all new cars sold and almost all vans.

"The scheme has done absolutely nothing to encourage businesses to renew their company cars and vans,” explained ACFO director Stewart Whyte.

In April, at a pre-scrappage scheme meeting held at the SMMT, ACFO said that the whole UK new and used car market must benefit from any Government-funded scheme.

“The Government choose to ignore our pleas," said Whyte. "We had a short-term scheme which appears to have worked well, but has only benefitted the retail buyer and the dealer networks."

He added: “It is probably too late for this Government to re-launch the scrappage scheme to make it more accessible to fleets.

"However, the Government and the motor industry should acknowledge that new car and van sales would probably have been significantly higher in 2009 if an incentive scheme had applied to the whole market and not just one minority section.”

As a result of the scrappage scheme, registrations from private buyers of small cars rose strongly in September.

Again thanks to the scrappage scheme, which has boosted the sale of new small cars, the average new car CO2 emissions fell 4.9% over the year-to-date to 150.2g/km.

"Market conditions remain challenging with demand being underpinned by the extremely successful scrappage incentive scheme,” said Paul Everitt, SMMT chief executive.

“The extension of the scheme will help to sustain demand through the latter part of this year and into 2010.”

A full analysis of September's sales figures will appear in the next issue of Fleet News, which will appear on October 22.