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GOVERNMENT CONSIDERING CAR TO WORK SCHEMES FOR TEACHERS
The Government has said it will consider ending the exclusion of teachers in England and Wales from one of the UK’s most popular employee benefits, car to work schemes. There are over 400,000 teachers affected by this rule across England and Wales.
In a parliamentary question, David Davies MP highlighted the unfairness that teachers in England and Wales are the only profession excluded from having access to salary sacrifice car schemes as they are not specified in the Government’s School Teacher Pay and Conditions Document (STCPD). The Government responded saying they ‘will consider whether the issue should be included in future referrals to the School Teachers’ Review Body’. This is a clear sign that the Government is taking this issue seriously.
Salary sacrifice car schemes, or green car schemes as they are known because they are environmentally friendly, allow employees to acquire a brand new, fully maintained and insured car through their salary, before income tax and NI are paid. This allows for average annual savings of around £1300 a year, compared to similar retail deals. At times when wages in teaching are stagnating, this £1300 annual saving could be a huge improvement to many teachers’ personal finances.
MPs recently attended a campaign event in Parliament to call for a change to this unfair and apparently unintended national rule in an effort to end this exclusion. Over 1,250 teachers have backed the campaign on an online petition which can be found at http://bitly.com/1v2zt5d.
Commenting, Tusker Chief Executive, David Hosking, said: “We are delighted that the government are planning to consider ending the exclusion of teachers in England and Wales from salary sacrifice car schemes”
“As a provider of these schemes, we’ve been approached on countless occasions by teachers who have told us it is extremely unfair that they can’t use a voluntary car scheme and the help of MPs will go a long way to changing that.”