The Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) is to run a special webinar explaining its new Dealer Standard and the benefits to all parties involved.

The AFP’s 28-point accreditation is designed to ensure that fleet cars and vans are delivered in excellent condition to the end user and with a high degree of consistency in vital areas

Taking place on Wednesday 20 April at 9:30am, it will feature AFP board members James Pestell and Ric Baird alongside Zoe Lawson, head of corporate sales at Marshall Motor Group. All three were involved in the accreditation’s development and will explain in the webinar why the Standard was created, its aims, what it includes, the benefits to all parties involved, monitoring and feedback processes, and how fleet operators, service providers and dealers can get involved.

Launched at the end of February, the new voluntary industry standard sets out benchmarks for dealer car and van deliveries and has been introduced to ensure a high degree of consistency in vital areas.

Already, Marshall, Inchcape and Sytner have signed up to the initiative, with more set to follow suit soon.

Paul Hollick, chair at the AFP, said: “We’ve been very pleased with the initial response to the launch of the Dealer Standard from across the fleet and dealer sectors. It has been extremely positive.

“Our intention was always that the accreditation should become used right across the industry by all dealers and fleets and we’ve made an excellent start towards that objective.

“Indeed, we are already hearing from some major leasing fleets that they are planning to work in the future only with dealers who commit to the Standard, which would certainly help to accelerate its adoption.

“We’ll be discussing these issues and more as part of the webinar, which will serve as an excellent introduction for any organisation interested in finding out more.”

The webinar is open to all interested parties and details can be found here.