nhs lease car or new purchase

connan13

what are the pros and cons of taking up the lease car offer as an nhs employee?
thanks for any advice.

Hintza

I haven't looked at this in years but I thought it wasn't a bad deal. But I think we need more info, what is the deal?

Baz_2

We are seriously looking into this.

The car comes with:

Insurance
Service costs
Road fund licence
Breakdown cover
Tyres replacements due to wear and tear

And you pay a monthly charge through salary sacrifice, which in effect saves you NI and pension costs too.

I have had a few quotes and you can get a Seat leon 2.0 DSG Auto for £313 pm, an Audi A3 for £278 pm and a VW Golf for £267pm.

The included benefits save you around £1200 per year. (ins £300, Breakdown £90, Tyres £120, Service £120, finance costs or loss of interest £450, RFL £145.

So the net monthly charge seems to be around £180 per month.

You need to be carefull as it will effect tax credits and benefits etc. It will not effect you pension though unless you are in the last few years of service.

You can terminate the agreement early which will cost you 5 months payments in the first year, 2 in the second and 1 in the third.

The problem is that the quotation process to find out the cost is laborious, in that you need to input the car you want into a website and they email you the price the next day. If you want to compare different mileages, equipment, models etc of one car you need to put in multiple quotes.

Also the prices don't seem to match the cost of the car, proably due to CO2 emissions and insurance bands etc. So similar priced cars don't seem to come out with a similar monthly cost.

If someone has found a bargain quote then please let me know as its pain looking for good value.

missile

On the figures as quoted it seems like a good deal. The only disadvantages I can see are:
1) You are tied into a deal which may not suit you in the future, however you do have a get out clause.
2) The included extras, which you do not want or need. For example all audis come with free breakdown recovery, so you are paying twice.
3) If you are a low milleage user, you may not get much benefit from the servicing and free tyres. e.g. an A3 TDI will not need servicing for 2 years/20,000 miles
4) My insurance is less than £300 / year and I would prefer to choose my own provider.

If it were me I would decide on the car and spec I wanted first and compare NHS quote to lease deal from the dealer. IMHO the A3 is the best of those you listed.

Fruity1

If you can I'd speak to someone in the NHS with a lease car.

You don't say if you will actually do many miles as part of your job. My limited knowledge is that my colleagues with lease cars were only getting 11p per mile whilst those with their own cars received up to 40p per mile. I know its now gone up to 44p per mile for engines over 1.6l but don't know what it may have risen to for lease cars. Just a point to bear in mind.

Also depending on whether you are classed as a 'regular user' you receive an amount each month for using your own car. Again for vehicles over 1.6 its just over £60.

XDA

I looked into this when I was working for the NHS last year.

Its a good deal, as the NHS get really good deals due to the fact that its the NHS.

A few things to think about though:

Mileage: You need to be doing alot of miles for it to be worth it. Probably atleast 12k per year I think.

Contract: You get the car's on a 3 year contract, so you are pretty stuck with your job for 3 years. Should you want to leave/get another job etc, you will have to pay back the remaining cost of the the lease in full.

Apart from that, its really worth it!