AVIS Fleet Services has won one of the biggest sale and leaseback deals in the history of the UK fleet industry, taking over the 3,000-strong company car fleet of financial services giant General Accident plc. The multi-million pound contract hire deal for GA's existing fleet will also see Avis, subsidiary of GE Capital Fleet Services, provide new cars from GA's Rover and Peugeot restricted badge list.

GA has stressed that the new arrangement is not an outsourcing deal, and no redundancies will stem from it. The company will continue to maintain a fleet department, although three or four members of staff will be redeployed.

Avis Fleet Services is in the process of recruiting internally a team of four people to its Fleet Alliance Operations Centre to look after the GA fleet. They will provide a centralised fleet management function, day-to-day operations control and ongoing policy advice. Salford-based Avis has written quality clauses and performance standard guarantees into the contract, which represents its largest yet single deal.

The additional 3,000 cars take GE Capital Fleet Services' UK fleet to more than 88,000 vehicles, rivalling Lex Vehicle Leasing's 88,500 contract hire vehicles for the top spot in UK leasing.