Leicester City Council has launched a new low carbon salary sacrifice car scheme to complete the transport solutions it offers to more than 13,600 eligible employees within its 18,000-strong workforce.

The Leicester scheme opens up the prospect of a new car to a much wider audience within the council, while making substantial savings in National Insurance and pension contributions. 

Leicester City Council already provide employees with salary sacrifice arrangements covering cycles, buses and park-and-ride and it felt that, by providing new cars as well, it was offering employees the total transport solutions necessary for them to get to work.

It has set a carbon ceiling of 120g/km to encourage staff to choose fuel efficient and more environmentally-friendly vehicles on the scheme, which is inclusive of motor insurance, servicing and maintenance, Road Fund Licence, roadside assistance, tyres and glass, plus protection against redundancy, resignation and maternity leave.

The council selected Tusker’s SalarySacrifice4Cars (SS4C), scheme under the terms of a Pan Government Collaborative Framework Agreement originally set up by North Yorkshire County Council when it established its own salary sacrifice car scheme with Tusker three years ago.

Under the agreement, the Tusker scheme is available for use by all UK contracting public sector authorities, including Government Departments, Non-Departmental Public Bodies, the NHS, Local Authorities, Police Authorities and Emergency Services.

So far the Leicester City Council scheme has been greeted very enthusiastically by employees with more than 50 new car orders being placed within the first few weeks of the scheme going live.

Cory Laywood (pictured), HR, pay and benefits manager at Leicester City Council, who is responsible for overseeing the scheme’s introduction, said it “ticked all the boxes”.

“This new salary sacrifice car scheme completes the number of transport solutions we can offer our staff to enable them to get to work.

"We also view it as the only real way to offer our staff a new car as cost effectively as possible.

“We reviewed other providers in the market, but the Tusker scheme was by far the most competitive and administratively simple to operate.

“It also offers our staff the widest possible choice of new vehicles from a wide variety of manufacturers - all supplied by local dealers. The cars will also be maintained and serviced locally which was another major advantage from our perspective and ensured that the scheme ‘spend’ stayed within the local area.

“All employees have access to an online portal which is very easy to use and allows staff to browse through the full range of available cars, or drill down and search for a car to match their exact specifications,” he said.

 

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