Building maintenance company High Access Maintenance has freed up more than £75,000 in cash flow by selling their depreciating vehicles after forming a partnership with Northgate Vehicle Hire.

With offices in Manchester and London, High Access provides building fabric maintenance and high access cleaning services to the commercial property sector nationwide.

As a result of winning numerous new business contracts, the company needed to increase its fleet; efficient vehicle maintenance and breakdown management became a key priority to ensure its vehicles remained on the road with minimal downtime.

High Access had previously run an owned fleet and considered purchasing more vehicles outright as well as contract hire.

However, investing a high capital outlay on new vehicles was an unattractive proposition for the growing company.

In addition, service, maintenance and repair costs became difficult to budget for year-on-year with the owned fleet, and replacing vehicles one at a time at the end of their life was a problematic and expensive task.

The solution came in the shape of flexible vehicle hire. With inclusive servicing, maintenance and repair, 24/7 AA breakdown cover, a courtesy vehicle as standard and no mileage penalties, High Access’s non-contractual partnership with Northgate means there are no surprises on cost and downtime is kept to a minimum.

Through using Northgate’s fleet disposal service, concerns around disposing of the older vans were instantly removed, with High Access receiving £75,000 for its old vehicles which it has invested back into the business.

Niel Bethell, managing director at High Access Maintenance, said: “This has been a really exciting time of growth for High Access Maintenance, but like any business experiencing a period of growth – it has been paramount that our high quality service has been kept to an unrivalled standard.

“We chose rental over the option to contract hire or purchase more vehicles as Northgate could offer a complete package with national coverage that provided solutions to all the issues we had with an owned fleet.

“Before speaking to Northgate, I was under the misconception that they only offered short term rental services, and hadn’t considered them as a long term solution.

“However, this was not the case and switching to long term hire with Northgate has proved to be the most tax efficient and cost effective way to run our fleet.

“Our cash flow has greatly improved and our depreciating assets have been removed, plus the flexibility to add and change vehicles whenever we want is a great benefit.”

Spencer Davi, senior sales manager at Northgate, said: “The partnership between High Access Maintenance and Northgate is a great example of how re-evaluating current vehicle acquisition methods can benefit a company.

“High Access is now able to focus on delivering nationwide service to its customers reassured that its fleet is in the hands of professionals, thanks to our 70-plus branch network with nationwide access to vehicles and breakdown support.”