Teachers in England and Wales could be eligible for cars though salary sacrifice schemes from early next year, after the Government pledged to consider the employee benefit.
David Hosking, chief executive of salary sacrifice car scheme provider Tusker, has been campaigning for teachers to have the same access as colleagues working elsewhere in the public sector. He is now hoping to meet the secretary of state for education, Nicky Morgan.
Hosking told Fleet News: “If we are going to retain the very best teachers for our children, we shouldn’t be excluding them from one of the most popular employee benefits – especially one that will not cost the Government anything over time.
“We hear from teachers in our customer areas every day about how unfair it is that they are not able to access our schemes, but any other profession can – this needs to change.”
Tusker’s campaign to allow state school teachers to be eligible for salary sacrifice car schemes has included an online petition, which has now been signed by more than 1,400 people, an early day motion in the House of Commons and lobbying by MPs sympathetic to the cause, most notably Conservative MPs David Davies and Richard Harrington, Tusker’s local MP.
Responding to a pre-election letter from Davies requesting that salary sacrifice car schemes should be included within the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) – the Department for Education’s guidance on general teachers’ pay – Morgan said: “The Government will consider whether the issue should be included in future referrals to the School Teachers’ Review Body.”
Harrington is in the process of organising a face-to-face meeting with Morgan to further press the issue.
Hosking said: “I would very much hope that, by early next year, all teachers in the state sector in England and Wales will be eligible for salary sacrifice car schemes.”
What’s more, independent research commissioned by Tusker from PricewaterhouseCoopers concludes that “salary sacrifice car schemes are cost-positive to HM Treasury over the long term”.
Hosking said: “The move would not cost the Government a penny. It’s a simple change which could affect thousands of lives.”
State school teachers in Scotland are eligible for salary sacrifice car schemes and Tusker is currently in the process of launching one to 20,000 employees, including teachers, of Aberdeen City Council.
The STPCD is reviewed annually and, while it is too late for the exemption applying to salary sacrifice to be removed for 2015, Hosking is hopeful the rules can be amended as part of the 2016 review.
Teachers are currently the only profession excluded from having access to salary sacrifice car schemes, but Tusker has calculated they could each save more than four times the benefits of the 1% pay rise, a maximum increase of around £300, most can expect to get this year as recommended by the School Teachers’ Review Body.
The savings are accrued as a result of teachers driving a new environmentally-friendly car that is more fuel efficient than their current vehicle as well as via reductions in income tax and national insurance payments.
Meanwhile, from April, NHS staff moved from a final salary pension scheme to a career average re-valued earnings scheme based on a proportion of pensionable earnings in each year of membership. Initially it was thought that could mean the end of salary sacrifice car schemes.
However, while that has proved not to be the case, NHS Business Services Authority advised in an NHS pensions briefing to staff that “entering into any salary sacrifice arrangement that reduces your gross pensionable earnings will have a negative effect on the amount of pension you are able to build up in that year”.
Hosking said: “We have more than 55 NHS trusts that have live salary sacrifice schemes with us and that number is growing by the month. We have more than 4,000 salary sacrifice cars being driven by NHS employees, with another 1,000 on order.”
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