Excess mileage on my personal leased car used for work

[Halesowenmum]

Hi

My first post so hello to everyone on here.

I have done interim roles/fixed term and umbrella in recent years doing project work but in May went Limited. In April I ran out of cash to enable me to replace a car that kept going wrong, so had not much choice but to go for a personal lease.

I carefully worked out the miles I'd do including if I went to the coast a couple of times in the year and I also bumped up the overall routine mileage in case I worked a bit further afield (although I tend to work within a max of 15 miles from where I live and no more).

In May I took on a contract 10 miles from home and I whilst did know that I would need to travel to one or more of 40 different sites in order to carry out the support side of my role, the relentless scale of that (as we enter into around 10 weeks of phased IT rollouts) was something I hadn't envisaged. I'm going to and from head office each day plus to at least two different sites a day then back to head office again and then back home again (often from 14 - 20 miles away from home) and this has put me well over my planned lease mileage.

I estimate that if the miles continued in this way by the end of this contract I'd have accrued 1,900 miles of excess mileage that I'd then have to pay back at the end of the lease.

I'm currently in contract to the end of December and wonder if it's like that the organisation I'm doing the work for can offer me anything (I'm guessing highly unlikely - it's public sector by the way) to alleviate this pain, or should I just start setting aside the money I'm going to be asked for at end of lease time (not for another 2-3 years) now so it's not a big lump sum to find at the time?

Quite new to contracting and so not sure if there are any other ways to structure any of this which might be of help.

Many thanks.

[BolshieBastard]

Im not sure what the question is here despite the thread title.

But, as far as mileage is concerned, your co can pay you 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles then 25p per mile until the start of the new tax year next April.

The lease you appear to have entered into is a personal one according to your post so, your co cannot give you extra money over and above the mileage allowance as a legitimate expense (for the excess mileage you'll rack up) imo.

Normally, excess mileage charges are around 8 to 15p per mile so even once you've gone over the 10k limit, you'll still have a surplus providing the lease doesnt have any other penalty clauses..

[northernladuk]

+1 to the above. Not sure why you are getting in such a panic. You've got 2 years in the lease yet. Lots can change in that time. A bit of bench time could change the while picture again. Also in two years you should have a pretty substantial warchest so 1900 miles extra charges isn't going to kill you.

[chopper]

Is it a lease as in effectively a long term rental agreement with a mileage cap, or is it a hire purchase with a balloon (GMFV) payment at the end? If the latter, the mileage payment only becomes due if you actually simply return the car at the end, it doesn't become due if you keep the car or trade the car in for another one.

It is rarely a good idea to try and work out your exact mileage requirements over 3 years but instead come up with a reasonable estimate, it is entirely feasible your situation will change in that period (need to do more or less miles, unexpected travelling comes up, etc). e.g. my current car was a HP with balloon based on 27,000 miles over 3 years. Currently on 31,000 now with 6 months to go but I'll be trading the car in rather than handing it back, so the mileage payment isn't bothering me.

Incidentally, are you not able to bill your client for the mileage incurred in the course of your work travelling from site to site?

[Bluespider]

When I did the sums for our lease i found that even if i went over by 5k miles in the 2 years of the lease it would still be cheaper to pay the excess mileage that it would have been to get a lease with the correct mileage.

Don't sweat it, some companies that do the returns don't even pay too much attention to the mileage within reason. They are more concerned with body work and damage to alloys.