Partnerships in Care has launched a salary sacrifice car scheme with Fleet Hire.

The scheme covers up to 5,000 employees, at over 60 hospitals and units in the UK, to provide them with access to a new car.

The new Car Salary Exchange scheme went live at Partnership in Care in June this year, with a carbon cap set at 130g/km to promote green car uptake, and already has more than 40 new car orders in the system with average CO2 emissions of 106g/km.

Staff are able to access up to 4,000 new cars available through the scheme and generate quotes online via the Car Salary Exchange online quotation platform.

Car Salary Exchange personnel have held a series of roadshows, both formal presentations and drop-in sessions, depending on which work best for size of the site and shift patterns, to promote the scheme at its sites.

"Scheme take-up has so far exceeded expectations", said Leanne Austin, senior HR business partner at Partnership in Care (pictured).

“We felt the car scheme was an excellent idea that would help us to attract and retain staff within our sector of the health industry, and have set the car lease terms at three years in a bid to try and retain staff for longer.

“There has been a very positive reaction to the scheme so far amongst employees. Take-up has been around 10% of those people who have registered an interest in the scheme, which is above our initial expectations for the scheme.”

Austin said she had been very pleased with the way the scheme had bedded in so quickly.

“I thought there was going to be more administration and query handling on our side, but Car Salary Exchange have been very good in taking responsibility for that side of the scheme and reducing the burden on us,” she said.

Zaf Iqbal, head of Car Salary Exchange at Fleet Hire, said: ”We are delighted to be providing our latest car scheme to Partnerships in Care, which has seen a high level of initial take-up amongst the staff. This is a perfect example of how a successful launch can increase scheme take-up beyond expectations.

“However, there is still plenty more work to be done to promote the scheme to all eligible staff, and we believe there is much greater potential for take-up across the organisation.”