Blogs - Simon Booth

Simon Booth
Managing Director of Astute Motoring Limited

The importance of checking your company vehicle insurance policy

In recent weeks we have seen a number of cases of what seemed like simple fleet management, and staff perks, leaving both company and individuals in tricky situations. 

HMRC have been focussing on company van users and the associated benefit-in-kind tax that may be due under UK tax law.  This has resulted in HMRC logging the registration number of vans entering retail stores during evenings and weekend, then following up with the company to see if they had approved the out-of-hours use, and whether the individual was, in fact, declaring the benefit-in-kind that was due.

 HMRC wants to know and checks how van use is declared, in order to assess the benefit-in-kind that may be due.  But with telematics being used by many companies, it shows that you, the company, knew the vehicles were being used privately and therefore are assisting with the tax avoidance. 

Perhaps more worryingly is the insurance of these vehicles, if there is “No private use declared” they may not have private use insurance.  Some insurance policies will cover driving to and from work because the vehicles may be needed for call outs, but this poses yet another area of concern and it would pay to check with your insurer how they define ‘To and from work’.  For example:

 Going home via the gym – the insurer may decide that the journey after the gym is not actually covered.   We have seen a still more worrying case recently – a van was been driven to work with a drop off, en route.  This vehicle was involved in an accident and the Insurer concluded that the driver and his daughter were not insured, as dropping his daughter off at school, en route, was not ‘To and from work’.

 We strongly recommend that you review your current situation to make sure you aren’t affected by either of these situations.  There are a number of ways to approach this and we are happy to share the experiences of other clients and how they have approached the matter.  If it’s a bit too much in the current workload, why not give us a call?  Let us take the burden on for you.  

Astute Motoring Limited has been recognised as one of the companies to watch in the 2015 business car manager awards. Instead of looking at google ranking or advertising budgets they have relied on service and value as their main factors for growth. Simon Booth The Managing Director commented on receiving the award, “Offering all types of funding and vehicle types is paramount to our growth because not all companies are the same, businesses are facing many challenges at the moment so we need to work alongside them to make sure they get things right and not just try and sell them any vehicle because we have it in stock.