The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Newcastle Hospitals) has selected a salary sacrifice car scheme from Tusker, for all 14,000 of its permanent employees to replace its existing scheme.

Newcastle Hospitals selected Tusker following a selection process involving a series of presentations from three different suppliers when the agreement with the current supplier ended.

“We selected Tusker as our new provider to give our employees better terms, reduced risk and improved service levels, and to reduce the work involved in administering the scheme,” said David Malone, Newcastle Hospitals’ green transport and staff benefits advisor.

The salary sacrifice car scheme is open to staff across all sites both full time and part time who meet the Trust’s minimum requirements for the scheme.

Eligible staff can sacrifice a proportion of their salary in return for a new car through Tusker’s online Salary Sacrifice4Cars system (SS4C), which has proved popular with organisations throughout both private and public sectors.

There is no carbon ceiling on vehicles that staff can choose, but there is a financial disincentive to select those emitting more than 120g/km of carbon dioxide, which was requested to support the Trust’s Carbon Management Strategy.

As well as the salary sacrifice vehicles, Tusker is also providing all new cars for Newcastle Hospitals’ contract car lease scheme for essential car users, which currently totals around 280 cars and carries a carbon cap of 120g/km per vehicle.

The Newcastle Hospitals salary sacrifice scheme has been live for just over a month and so far uptake and feedback has exceeded expectations, added Malone.

“Feedback from staff has been that it is very easy to get quotes and order new cars online through the system, while the delivery of new vehicles has been efficient and on time. We have also been very happy with the levels of support, commitment and service that Tusker has provided,” he said.

It took just six weeks from Tusker’s selection for the new scheme to be up and running and available to all staff, through a web portal which provides them with direct access to the SS4C scheme.

The scheme has been communicated to staff through a series of web bulletins, emails and payslip attachments, while two large staff benefits events were also held with around 600-800 staff attending each event.

The new salary sacrifice and lease car arrangements are being provided in conjunction with NHS CPC Drive, the health service fleet management offering which provides NHS Trusts with a range of fleet management services, including car leasing, salary sacrifice cars, the management of grey fleet vehicles and expenses management, for which Tusker is the solus, preferred supplier.

The NHS CPC Drive initiative launched early last year and provides a single platform to deliver a range of fleet services to any of the 400-plus NHS Trusts nationally. Newcastle Hospitals now join more than 20 live CPC Drive schemes offered by NHS and other public sector organisations to their staff.

Julian Clarke, Head of Fleet Services at CPC Drive, welcomed Newcastle Hospitals to CPC Drive’s salary sacrifice and business lease car schemes.

“Adding CPC Drive to Newcastle Hospitals’ portfolio of existing contracts offered by the NHS CPC will help them further streamline the fleet services offered to staff and save the Trust even more,” he said.

Kirsty Spencer-Tucker, Account Manager at Tusker, commented: “Obviously, we are delighted to welcome Newcastle Hospitals as the latest addition to the growing number of organisations that are signing up to our market-leading salary sacrifice car solution, SS4C.

“It is also interesting to see salary sacrifice car scheme becoming so well established that organisations are now looking at selecting new second round suppliers and looking for better service levels and offerings than those they had signed up to initially.”

Tusker currently has over 95 live salary sacrifice car schemes in the UK in operation.
 

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