Gerry Keaney has been surprised. In his first year as chief executive of the BVRLA he’s been able to tour the fleet industry and what he has found is a sector very much on the up. But he has also been surprised by the level of understanding outside of the leasing business about just what it brings to UK PLC, and he’s on a mission to change that.

‘When you’re inside the leasing and vehicle rental business, you know what you are doing and how you do it, but when you sit down in front of Government officials as we have, you quite often end up having some very interesting discussions on some fairly basic stuff, on things such as how do you set lease rates and RVs,’ he says. ‘These are not stupid people, and they have a conceptual understanding, but when you talk practically, it really is quite illuminating.

‘I’ve found the association to be very well established and well-run and my predecessor John Lewis did an incredible job establishing the credentials of the BVRLA. So we now have a good understanding of the people in Government we need to speak to and what departments they are in, but we need to continue that work and sometimes in a different way.

‘For example, we want to work more closely with our members in terms of utilising them for our discussions with Government. The whole issue of taxation and vehicle leasing is a mess. It’s completely confused: disadvantaging, disallowing and discriminating against leasing companies by not allowing them to claim capital allowances on low emission vehicles in the last Budget was a complete mistake.

‘The good news is we have got a very good dialogue going with HMRC, which we want to extend to the Treasury, about what should a new regime for the tax on leases look like. It’s at the early stages, but we as a trade association know who we should speak to and can get them round the table, but then we want our members directly in those meetings with the likes of HMRC and DfT so they can explain about what those policies means for their business. It makes more impact if we’ve got somebody round the table who has a fleet of 135,0000 and employs 500 people.’

On shorter term strategies, Keaney sees huge potential for growth in the sector, because he believes that post-recession there is a change in the way businesses are approaching funding and cashflow.

‘Our members are very active in the SME market and that sector is also increasingly receptive to the offers our members have, as we are seen as being a critical part of the funding equation.

‘I think what’s clear is that having come out of the recession there’s a corporate mindset that you want to maintain as much flexibility in your funding structure. That’s come about because if you have had difficulty with finance during the recession you’re never going to forget that experience, and even the ones that have cash in the bank are going to think they want to keep it there for flexibility, strategy or peace of mind. And so they are seeing fleet funding and leasing as being that incremental source of finance in a way they didn’t do so before.

‘And for us that incremental area is very important. We need to get the message across because when we’re talking to Government, for example about the role vehicle leasing can play, part of my discussion with them has been that if an SME can’t access vehicles through leasing the likelihood

is they just don’t fund a vehicle, and that means they don’t take on another technician, or an engineer, and that job is not created.’

Keaney says that within Government there was an assumption that if it’s not leased it will be bought for cash or some other form of finance, but he claims the reality now is that is just not the case. He sees more evidence of leasing being used as an incremental source of finance – directly related to the growth of business.

‘That’s where our members have been active in communicating that message of how leasing can fund the expansion of the SME sector in this country. We need to continue to have that dialogue with the Government, because one of the issues we are working on is how little understanding there is outside of the sector of what the sector does and how it does it,’ he adds.

‘When you see the importance of the fleet leasing market, generating £15billion in terms of GDP, employing directly 38,000 people and supporting nearly 100,000 more outside the sector, for me, having come in, it’s been a surprise to see the lack of understanding of the sector.

‘Similarly it is not understood that, of UK-built cars, our members buy 80% of them, so when you are talking about a UK PLC agenda for car manufacturing, which is rightly perceived to be one of the successes, you can’t talk about that without talking about who buys and uses those cars – and it’s our members.

‘We are buying over a million cars a year and the sheer numbers in terms of capacity it is tremendous. And so those kinds of messages about how we do it, why we do it, we can’t say too often and too loudly because fleet is so important for British business.’