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Case Studies

Client: GB Building Solutions Ltd
Contact: Mike Lethaby

Achieving a successful management buy-out is quite a challenge. Making sure that any staff involved stay motivated and well-rewarded is likely to be a key follow-up priority.

Mike Lethaby knows that from experience. He’s finance director of GB Building Solutions Ltd, a leading construction company with its headquarters in Sunbury on Thames, Surrey, and offices nationwide, which was created following a management buy-out in August 2005.

The buy-out involved 400 staff transferring under TUPE regulations, which protect employees’ terms and conditions when a business switches to a new employer, including 300 or so with company cars or receiving a cash allowance to use their own car for work.

One of Mike’s first priorities was to look at ways to build on and improve GB Building Solutions’ existing car scheme - and that’s how a successful relationship with Opticar began.

Mike explains: “I wasn’t just looking for a company that could provide car leasing arrangements, through which we could acquire company cars. I wanted a wide-ranging service, in which our partner could advise on how best to operate our car scheme in the most cost-effective, commercial manner that also benefited employees.

“We interviewed a number of potential partners and very much liked Opticar’s personable approach and the fact that they weren’t trying to sell us something off the shelf, at a time when we were saying: ‘This is what we want, can you help?’”

Over the next six months or so, the company worked closely with Opticar as it tailored its mixed fleet solution to suit GB Building Solutions’ needs. The solution gives employees the option of a company car, a cash allowance or a personal car contract (PCC), where the employee contract is directly with a car finance company, backed by a full maintenance package.

Mike says: “One size fits all car schemes don’t work, because each individual is different. This is three solutions in one, making it much more flexible.”

The scheme was launched in summer 2006, following a series of presentations to employees to explain the benefits of the new scheme. Once it was in place, the scheme was adjusted in response to employee comments, and has now bedded down comfortably.

Benefits include the way the system operates almost entirely on line, from the selection tool, which employees use to decide which of the three car options is right for them – and, where appropriate, the most cost-effective car for their circumstances – to logging of business mileage, mileage record-keeping for tax purposes, and calculations of cash allowances.

The scheme continues to evolve – over the next couple of months, Mike will be reviewing the scheme, particularly in relation to occupational road risk ahead of the Corporate Manslaughter Act coming into force in April 2008 – and he says: “Both the system and our relationship with Opticar are working very well.”