Company Supplied Car Insurance - Should employees have to pay insurance excess?

Rodger_1959

My wife works for a company that has recently changed to be an EOT "Employee Owned Trust".

She is based from home and drives a company supplied car as part her job, which involves driving to different customers sites. Sometimes this could be five different customer locations (and car parks etc) per day and sometimes 100+ miles a day. (Same as her colleagues)

The company she works for has bought in a new rule (1st February 2024) for all company car users and wants everyone to sign to say that she is responsible for the excess on all and insurance claims. She has not signed, but the excess is £500 per car driver and the wording of the "new terms and conditions" make it sound like they can just take money from her as and when they want for any damages etc to the car....her fault or not.

Anyone know anything about this?
Is this legal?
They have imposed it without consultation, but she has said she does not agree to it.


I think its wrong that an employee should be driving a company supplied vehicle in company time, parked in a customers car park and for a tree to fall on it and then she has to pay a £500 excess.

Surely the company should be including these insurance excesses should be part of the company running costs and passed onto the customer in way of increased prices etc, not passed on to the employees as its damaging moral and making them worried about doing their job every day.

If she wrote the car off during the weekend, then I can kind of understand....as she would have been using it at the weekend.
But she hardly uses the car at the weekends because we have 2x other cars in the family anyway.

HELP!

dunstonh

Is this legal?

Things like this are down to employment contracts.   Nothing seems untoward here in respect of its inclusion.  No comment on its implementation though.

I think its wrong that an employee should be driving a company supplied vehicle in company time, parked in a customers car park and for a tree to fall on it and then she has to pay a £500 excess.

That is how a car excess works.  

Surely, the company should include these insurance excesses as part of the company's running costs and passed on to the customer in way of increased prices, etc, not passed on to the employees as it damages morale and makes them worried about doing their job every day.

That is one method some will use (often resulting in a lower salary as part of the overall package).   Another way is for certain benefits/costs to be laid out (again, as part of an overall package).     

A remuneration package is the sum of its parts. Not one bit in isolation.  Clearly they want to reduce costs and rather than kill the company car, they are looking at making provision of it cheaper for the employer.   Possibly to make it fairer on those that do no have company cars.

user1977

dunstonh said:

I think its wrong that an employee should be driving a company supplied vehicle in company time, parked in a customers car park and for a tree to fall on it and then she has to pay a £500 excess.

That is how a car excess works.  

Well, it's how it works from the point of view of the vehicle owner, but it's a reasonable query as to why the employee ought to bear the cost. Are you saying it's commonplace that they should?