Jump to content

Flexi Officers Cars


Recommended Posts

What does your Brigade / Service provide for Flexi Duty Officers, a car exclusively for the post, a pool car for when on duty or give them an allowance to use their own vehicle?

Link to comment

All Manchester flexis use their own cars. There has been talk over the past few years of supplying them. I think Vauxhall and Skoda have been mentioned but never materialised at all. When I was Flexi in National Resilience I used my own car and claimed the 45p a mile which was quite lucrative until it dropped to 16p a mile. Bearing in mind all running costs and insurance had to be covered by myself. 

Not sure how this compares to those services who provide vehicles, @Steve has made mention in another post how the tax burden has not been good for those with supplied cars.

Link to comment

Should have added we provide a car for each post. Makes / models change depending on whoever wins the contract, most recent have been Skoda, Renault and now Volvo.

Out of interest did you respond to calls under blues as part of the role?

In general for anyone that uses their own car, do you receive any allowance for running costs, especially insurance, can see the quote for blue light response being interesting.

Link to comment
6 minutes ago, Keith said:

Out of interest did you respond to calls under blues as part of the role?

I had blues issued, but when being mobilised from Manchester to the Norfolk Coastal flooding or Manchester to Wheal Jane Mine in Truro, I never bothered. Can you imagine it xD They didn't need me that bad. Spent too many years driving a fire engine with blues. :)

Link to comment

Humberside have Skoda Octavia's for the FDS staff with fitted blues, one or two have crests on doors but mainly plain now.  Lincolnshire have a pool of Ford Focus replacing the Astra's for up to WM and temp SM I think then its a lease vehicle (which varies) fitted with blues for SM and above.

Years ago in Lincs I always remember a fleet of high end i.e. Subaru, Skoda VRS turning up on blues to a job, now they things like your Audi A3, more sensible ones.

Link to comment

In Dorset we have a few Skoda Octavia Scouts, a number of Kia Sportages and I believe Nissan Qashqai's as pool cars. I know couple of officers use their own cars as well.

Since we merged with Wiltshire there are also Astra's.   

Link to comment

LFB have a pool of around marked 50 BMW i3's for Temp SM's and other senior officers who may need them due to their car being of the run; they are also used by light duties staff. Occasionally, you may see a senior officer borrowing one of our 5 marked mini's that were made famous in the Olympics.

Most senior officers in LFB though, will have either a lease car with contribution from the firm or will be on our essential car user scheme where they will be paid a retainer and claim business mileage... they will also be insured by LFB for blue light runs.

An audible warning device will be fitted and a magnetic blue light provided, though many add additional lights, this is never a bad thing in the big smoke!!

As a side note, temp SM's can have access to the essential car user scheme where the temp role is expected to last at least 6mths.

Link to comment

Here's ours...fire and crest on the bonnet. Covert lighting in grill, windscreen , rear quarter lights and blue and red repeaters in rear, solid blue light in rear window which apparently stops us getting automatic tickets from the speed cameras. Black box, cameras front and rear facing. Tom Tom linked to airwave radio giving incident details and pre loaded auto route to incident and status codes.

Surrey Car.png

Link to comment

Interesting colour scheme Becile, looks a bit like Starsky and Hutch in reverse.xD

Any particular reason for it, is it designed to make them more visible to traffic?

Ours used to be plain white with a magnetic roof light but are now fully marked up with a variation of a battenburg design. Scroll down through this blues-twos page for the various models and no, don't ask what colour some of the Renault's are.

Link to comment

Of course

22 hours ago, Keith said:

Interesting colour scheme Becile, looks a bit like Starsky and Hutch in reverse.xD

Any particular reason for it, is it designed to make them more visible to traffic?

Ours used to be plain white with a magnetic roof light but are now fully marked up with a variation of a battenburg design. Scroll down through this blues-twos page for the various models and no, don't ask what colour some of the Renault's are.

Look familiar? And no not more visible sadly

Fliexi Car.jpeg

Link to comment
On ‎27‎/‎04‎/‎2017 at 16:23, Aspire said:

LFB have a pool of around marked 50 BMW i3's for Temp SM's and other senior officers who may need them due to their car being of the run; they are also used by light duties staff. Occasionally, you may see a senior officer borrowing one of our 5 marked mini's that were made famous in the Olympics.

Most senior officers in LFB though, will have either a lease car with contribution from the firm or will be on our essential car user scheme where they will be paid a retainer and claim business mileage... they will also be insured by LFB for blue light runs.

An audible warning device will be fitted and a magnetic blue light provided, though many add additional lights, this is never a bad thing in the big smoke!!

As a side note, temp SM's can have access to the essential car user scheme where the temp role is expected to last at least 6mths.

Aspire has hit the nail right on the head, so no more to say in terms of how it works. However, there are always bleats (from the public and Firefighters) about the 'type' of cars we have. Lots of higher end cars like Audi's, BMW's, Jag's etc. Why they ask. Well, in this day and age, basic premium cars A4's, 3er's, 5er's, XF's and the like are not much more money to buy, especially commercially to lease companies, than your run of the Mill Ford or Vauxhall. But in 3 years, they are still worth a lot more in terms of resale. So it’s often cheaper for an officer to lease a 3er or an A4 than a Mondeo..... I ask you, the Firefighters or the public this.... if you had to lease a car and the choice was a Mondeo Zetec Auto for £148 per month or an Audi A4 for £118 per month what would you do? Tell me anyone who would pay more just to placate ranting Firefighters or members of the public.

It’s all about market forces. It isn't mine or my colleagues fault that well engineered, efficient reliable German cars are cheaper than (what were) more conventional models. Its everywhere, the Motorways are no longer filled with Mondeo's, Insignia's or Passat's. I'd dare to venture that most company car drivers across all sectors now us so called 'premium' cars.... the difference is, look close or get to know your premium cars, they tend to be 320d business editions around the £30k mark, not the £48k 330d with every conceivable extra thrown in. But that is the level of grief we get.

Frankly LFB can't afford to buy cars for every Officer like smaller FB's (although the budget is relative) there would also be a massive upset for crews at Stations with all of these pool cars parked on stations when officers were off duty. As all of the Officer rota groups work alongside each other on most weekdays, there is also no option of sharing unlike watches that are never on duty together.

Believe me, with the burden the car schemes have become. I’d happily have the actual car of my choice on the drive (A Q7 or something similarly large and planet killing) and I’d gladly have a nice walk over to Hornchurch every shift to pick up my marked Octavia, i3, Insignia, Prius or whatever knowing it wouldn’t cost me a penny. Still this time next year, the sun will be rapidly setting  on my career and I'll be liking my lips actually walking into the Audi dealer instead of pressed up the window looking longingly inside. ^_^

Link to comment

Steve raises very good points around price and quality..our chief insisted on the marked car rather than lease (partly due to how we are funded ect ect) but a few facts remain for us at least.

The x3s can bring back up to55mpg...better than our last fleet

The resale value is imense- they have a 5 or 7 year resale value on the project- we paid around 15K for a 2.0 x3 which retails at well over twice that- even after 5 years there maybe a profit there.

The build quality and reliability has improved.

It gives us an improved 4 wheel drive fleet that could be utilised as a nd when  required.

Link to comment

I did hear second hand that BMW did come close to getting the contract for ours, but was decided against for some of the reasons above.

A technicality type question Steve, but what is the difference between essential user and a lease scheme? Is it down to how the nice people at HMRC view these things?

Link to comment
10 hours ago, Steve said:

Still this time next year, the sun will be rapidly setting  on my career and I'll be liking my lips actually walking into the Audi dealer instead of pressed up the window looking longingly inside

Last time I looked into the window of an Audi was when I was pushing yours about 10 years ago in London after it died on us ;)

Link to comment
37 minutes ago, Keith said:

A technicality type question Steve, but what is the difference between essential user and a lease scheme? Is it down to how the nice people at HMRC view these things?

Sort of, yes.

Essential car user is when the officer owns their own car and joins the scheme, receives in the region of £130pm for up keep (insurance, maintenance, wear n tear etc.) plus 45p per mile, not sure how the tax man gets involved.

Lease scheme brings benefit in kind and those type of things into play.

Link to comment

Interesting topic a discussion a few of us have been having where I work this week.  I own my own car and essentially I am on the essential user scheme as above receiving £425 a month (tax free) and a fuel card, I just pay back my personal miles at 8p a mile, where as company ones I have to do 1538 otherwise I get taxed on the difference of the £425.

The rest of the lads get a Mondeo (mainly for boot space for stock) but they get taxed quite a bit and have a large insurance premium they have to pay (£1000) if anyone has a bump, one of the reasons they want to leave and also owning your own car you can have what you want as such but you can make a bit of cash on the allowance.

Now I speak to a lot of people who see those turning up in lease cars, weather it be fire or none fire and say well your earning too much to be driving around in a MB AMG C220 (£30-35K I believe in the showroom) but the monthly payments are the same or less than the Mondeo.  There are some perks to leasing and you can get some good bargains out there.  Members of the public don't see that, they just see nice expensive cars and don't see the cost savings behind it all.

Link to comment
12 hours ago, Carl said:

Last time I looked into the window of an Audi was when I was pushing yours about 10 years ago in London after it died on us ;)

Yes, That was a bad example, so bad that Audi took it back after 18 months no questions asked. But from where I sit, for large SUV's the Q7 looks to be best of the bunch. the new XC90 is an awesome car ans slightly cheaper for a one to two year old model, but the lack of a V6 engine kills it for me. Plus I'm not entirely happy with the current car an XC60. The new Chassis, which the XC90, V90 and new XC60 are built on is a game changer, but I'm not convinced.

12 hours ago, Aspire said:

Sort of, yes.

Essential car user is when the officer owns their own car and joins the scheme, receives in the region of £130pm for up keep (insurance, maintenance, wear n tear etc.) plus 45p per mile, not sure how the tax man gets involved.

Lease scheme brings benefit in kind and those type of things into play.

The tax man doesn't get involved with the Essential car users scheme. If I still had time to serve, I'd bin the lease and go back onto essential which I was on when I originally got promoted to ADO in 2004.

Link to comment
On 27/04/2017 at 19:15, Becile said:

Here's ours...fire and crest on the bonnet. Covert lighting in grill, windscreen , rear quarter lights and blue and red repeaters in rear, solid blue light in rear window which apparently stops us getting automatic tickets from the speed cameras. Black box, cameras front and rear facing. Tom Tom linked to airwave radio giving incident details and pre loaded auto route to incident and status codes.

Surrey Car.png

I thought you'd have a chauffeured Bentley? :D

 

Off topic, with the huge uptake in lease cars in the uk, where do they get offloaded to when the lease expires and the "owner" doesn't want to pay the final residual charge?

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

Leaving Surrey and the fleet of Bentleys and BM’s behind was a wrench but my new Brigade motor isnt too shabby eh @Carl?

Not bad on juice for a big car to be fair... In fact in three weeks I haven’t filled it up once ?

Tesla.jpeg

Although when Carl’s new whip arrives it will be even nicer ??

  • Haha 2
Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...