Employment Law re: Company Car

[Seahound]

There is an employer, who provides a car allowance to employees with the conditions of a company car. ie less than 4 years old/120,000 miles, business insurance etc.

There is no company car option.

My question is, can this employer enforce company car standards on a car allowance without providing the option of a company car fro employees?

Any employment law precedents and/or rulings would be most beneficial.

Thanks in advance,

Seahound

[woofgang]

why not? employees don't have to accept the car allowance..provided that the requirements are written into contractual T and C and applied equally across all staff, IMO there is no problem. I could see that the employer would not want to have his staff driving rent a wrecks on company business, both for the unreliability and the company image

[EcclesCake]

My previous employer gave the option of taking the car allowance with restrictions regarding age, number of doors etc on the car or we could take standard motor mileage rate. By taking the SMMR we could drive what ever we liked.

[EcclesCake]

I forgot to add that our third option was to use hire cars.

A lot of employers and employees have moved away from company cars due to the tax implications/complications.

[evil__sheep]

yes they can

[factor-fiction]

Does your job require you to drive on company business?
If not then it seems just like part of a salary package, and I don't understand why they place restrictions or why they care whether you actually have a car or not.

[woofgang]

If it was given as salary, it might become part of the pension calculation, which an allowance does not