Salary sacrifice "is attractive for staff"

Ultra Electronics has introduced a salary sacrifice for cars scheme to around 1,800 employees as part of a benefits package available.The company has operated a flexible scheme providing benefits such as holidays, dental and medical cover, pensions, cycle to work and childcare vouchers for a number of years.

Now for the first time it has introduced salary sacrifice for cars. Take up is predicted to be below 3%.

Those taking up the scheme, which is open to all employees, will sign contracts that include all maintenance, including servicing, batteries, exhausts and tyres, fully comprehensive insurance, early termination insurance, GAP (Guaranteed Asset Protection) insurance, redundancy insurance, annual road fund licence, MOT where applicable, and European roadside assistance.

It is also open to company car drivers who want to opt out of the company car scheme. Employees who qualify for company cars either receive a car or can take a cash allowance.
It is then up to them to source a car for business purposes, which must be fit for purpose and conform to company rules, such as no two-door sportscars.

Employees can source this car using whatever means they wish including opting to have a car through the salary sacrifice scheme.
“We had previously carried out employee surveys which showed that the availability of cars as part of the benefits package would be attractive to many of our staff. This is our way of answering those requests,” said HR Director, Keith Thomson.

“We have set a limit of 150g/km for cars in the scheme, because we didn’t want to exceed the 160g/km threshold for corporation tax and we want the scheme to be as green as possible.

“We normally target a minimum 2-3% take-up for new benefits within our scheme and we would be happy with this level of participation across the car scheme.”

The scheme will be Tusker’s SalarySacrifice4Cars scheme (SS4C), which was chosen based on the compatibility of systems with Ultra’s existing benefits provider and the lack of suitable flexible benefits arrangements from its existing company car fleet suppliers.