Sunrise Senior Living UK has switched its fleet of minibuses from wholly owned to leased, with the new vehicles provided by Enterprise Flex-E-Rent.

The care home business had already identified that leasing or rental offered greater benefits, including greater flexibility and reduced costs, over ownership. The lockdown accelerated the switch from a wholly owned fleet and Enterprise was able to source and deliver 36 seven-seat MPVs within two days at the end of March.

Enterprise is now replacing the MPVs with new nine-seat accessible minibuses on a five-year contract hire model.

Sunrise director of procurement Chris Dean said: “The number crunching established that leasing was the best route. Enterprise included full maintenance, servicing, repairs and even offers maintenance on-site, which means the minibuses are on the road more of the time and able to support more activities. We're really pleased with how Enterprise helped us. The response is always very quick.”

The fleet opted for nine-seaters instead of its previous 15-seat models due to reduced legislation.

Sunrise plans to share the new vehicles across adjacent locations to increase utilisation as new residential and care homes are opened.

Danny Glynn, managing director of Enterprise Flex-E-Rent, said: “This is an example of how flexible rental enables businesses to meet long and short-term mobility requirements, both for customers and employees. Organisations now appreciate that ensuring safe, reliable, efficient mobility for customers and employees is an essential part of their business service.

“They need solutions that enable vehicles to be quickly added or replaced as their needs change, which is exactly what rental is designed to deliver.”

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