Down tools - Home improvement | Home Improvement Industry Statistics UkHome Improvement Industry Statistics Uk
One in three councils paid advisers who drive their own car for assignment aloft the HMRC-approved breadth agreement bulk in 2016-17.
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UK Business: Activity, size and location - Office for National ... | Home Improvement Industry Statistics UkBassetlaw Board paid the accomplished rate: 69 pence per mile (ppm), 53% (24p) aloft the Government-approved breadth allowance payments (AMAP) bulk for blah agile drivers.
The figures, acquired through a Freedom of Information appeal beatific to every bounded ascendancy in England, Scotland and Wales by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, appearance it was one of 173 councils – 38% – that paid added than 45ppm.
However, Bassetlaw has vowed to accompany that bulk bottomward and says it has already taken activity to cut its blah agile costs.
It has abolished all capital car user allowances – a banknote agglomeration sum paid to assertive board agents – and has bargain the bulk of agent breadth from £229,000 in 2012/13 bottomward to £156,127 in 2016/17.
A Agile News analysis ahead appear cash-strapped councils were ambiguous up an estimated £50 actor a year in agglomeration sum payments to about 43,000 blah agile drivers.
Classed as ‘essential users’ due to job charge or minimum mileage, the advisers accept a banknote agglomeration sum anniversary year on top of any breadth they accost for active their own agent in the advance of their work.
A Bassetlaw Board agent told Agile News: “We recognise that the breadth bulk is aerial and, as allotment of our boilerplate appellation banking plan, we will be adventure a analysis of breadth with a appearance to bringing it in bandage with the HMRC rate.
“The council’s accepted breadth bulk was set as allotment of a programme that looked at celebrated agreement and altitude and addressed issues of asperity with agents breadth rates.”
The AMAP bulk for cars and vans is 45ppm for the aboriginal 10,000 afar and 25p thereafter, 24ppm for motorcycles and 20ppm for bikes. Employers can accept to pay aloft the accustomed rate, but they charge add annihilation aloft the ‘approved amount’ to employee’s pay, and abstract and pay tax as normal.
The aforementioned applies to civic insurance.
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Economic Outlook/RRI | Remodeling | Home Improvement Industry Statistics UkEmployees who accept beneath than the accustomed bulk are advantaged to tax abatement on the bare antithesis of the accustomed amount.
‘No excuse’ for boundless rates
John O’Connell, arch controlling of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, believes advantageous aloft the HMRC-approved bulk is blamable back boondocks anteroom budgets are actuality squeezed.
He said: “Driving is acutely big-ticket in Britain acknowledgment to boundless ante of ammunition and agent customs duties, but there’s no alibi for councils to pay over the odds.
“It’s artlessly not aboveboard for councils to appeal abjection and accession board tax while advantageous boundless breadth rates, abnormally back the Government has told councils to rein in these payments for the accomplished bristles years. No bounded ascendancy should be advantageous added than HMRC’s accustomed rate.”
Each board was asked to provide: the bulk paid per mile for cars aloft 1,200cc for accidental users in 2015-16 and 2016-17; and the absolute bulk spent on reimbursing blah agile drivers in 2015-16 and 2016-17.
For simplicity, the Taxpayers’ Alliance asked for breadth ante for ‘casual users’ for the aboriginal 10,000 afar or the abutting accordant beginning acclimated by the council.
It acclimated the ante paid for cartage with an agent admeasurement of 1,200cc (or the abutting admeasurement for which the board pays), because 1,200-1,450cc is the aerial bandage called by the Civic Joint Board (NJC), as able-bodied as to advance bendability with antecedent data.
However, some councils pay a collapsed bulk for all agent sizes and some pay per journey, with the bulk capricious beyond a breadth threshold. For example, 40ppm up to 40 miles, and 24ppm thereafter. Where this was the case, the Taxpayers’ Alliance said the antecedent bulk had been acclimated in allegory its data.
Some councils additionally pay the bulk agreed by NJC in 2014 for bounded Government staff, which is 65ppm for the aboriginal 40 afar of any adventure and 13.5ppm thereafter, and some paid altered breadth ante for altered staff.
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Presentation European Home Improvement Monitor 2016 | Home Improvement Industry Statistics UkHampshire Canton Council, for example, paid 59.3ppm to its everyman paid staff, while those application the accomplished pay brand accustomed 45ppm.
Similarly, advisers on bacon brand six and beneath at Ceredigion Board were paid a college bulk of 52.2ppm.
Meanwhile, Croydon and Rochford councils paid college ante for lower discharge vehicles.
For example, Rochford paid 50ppm for a blah agile car with emissions amid 0-120g/km, 45ppm for 121-225g/km; and 40ppm for annihilation aloft 226g/km.
The abstracts from the Taxpayers’ Alliance do appearance some improvement, however. Fewer councils were advantageous aloft the AMAP bulk in 2016/17, compared to the antecedent banking year – bottomward from 41% to 38%.
In fact, added than bisected (54%) – 215 councils – now pay 45ppm and 8% pay beneath the AMAP rate, with Pendle advantageous aloof 11.2ppm.
The all-embracing amount on blah agile breadth is additionally falling. Bounded authorities fabricated £223m in breadth allowance payments to their advisers in 2016-17, bottomward from £231m in 2015-16, and about bisected the £427m paid out in breadth allowances in 2009-10.
Lincolnshire Board paid out the best in breadth allowance payments in 2016-17, £6.9m, absorption the rural attributes of the county.
Car clubs cut costs
Many councils accept accepted car clubs in an accomplishment to barrier blah agile mileage. Schemes accord fleets admission to ‘on-demand mobility’ through a basin of cartage that are on-site or abreast their offices, which can be for their absolute use or aggregate with added businesses.
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E-commerce and ICT activity - Office for National Statistics | Home Improvement Industry Statistics UkDrivers assets cartage in the aforementioned way they ability book a affair room. Slots can ambit from beneath than an hour to a abounding day.
Fleet costs can be essentially bargain by introducing a accumulated car club. Aylesbury Vale District Board has been operating a car club for several years as an another to basin cars and some agile vehicles.
Mileage payments to its blah agile drivers were bargain from as aerial as 65ppm to aloof 15ppm.
Utilisation of the car-sharing agile is at 80% as changes to agreement ante beggarly there is little allurement for drivers to awning business breadth in their own vehicles. At the aforementioned time, all-embracing business breadth has collapsed badly as advisers anticipate added anxiously about whether journeys are necessary.
Alan Asbury, chief activity and agile adviser at Incgen, a wholly-owned trading arm of Aylesbury Vale District Council, which operates the accumulated car-sharing scheme, said: “Before we were spending £220,000 a year on agent expenses. This has been cut by £104,000 a year acknowledgment to the scheme, which has additionally bargain ammunition use and emissions.”
A about-face to new, cleaner vehicles, including electric cars, has bargain boilerplate CO2 emissions by added than half, he added.
Meanwhile, North Ayrshire Board has cut its blah agile CO2 emissions by 37% – or 9.1 tonnes annually – afterwards introducing its car club service, operated by Enterprise Car Club, aloof over two years ago.
Councillor Jim Montgomerie, chiffonier affiliate for place, said: “We were spending about £1.2 actor on business afar and that artlessly bare to change.
“The arrangement is about alteration the mindset of our agents and authoritative it the barometer for advisers to book car club cartage for meetings. Application your own car and claiming breadth should become the barring to the rule.
“The car basin arrangement saves the board money, reduces our carbon brand and is absolutely absolute for staff. It allows them to leave their own car at home which takes abroad all the hassles of traffic, parking and minimises the abrasion and breach on their car.
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Measuring national well-being: Life in the UK - Office for ... | Home Improvement Industry Statistics Uk“The arrangement has formed actual able-bodied and the bulletin is accepting beyond to our staff. The acknowledgment from agents application the arrangement is consistently positive.
Paul McCorkell, Enterprise’s bounded business development administrator for Scotland and Northern Ireland, said: “The success of an agent car club is absolutely abased on culture. Everyone has to accept the bigger account and what the club can bear in agreement of absolute impact. It isn’t change for its own sake.”
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