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Noted on 29 Oct 2026

The Budget had nothing in it for shared or pool fleets by name. Reading the motoring measures together, though, it feels most of them push organisations in the same direction: away from paying staff to drive their own cars, and towards vehicles the organisation owns and shares.

The 55p a mile tax-free rate for business journeys in staff's own cars, raised in May for the first time since 2011, is now permanent. Above 10,000 miles a year the rate goes from 25p to 35p from April 2027, which matters most for the people who drive furthest for work, community nurses and site inspectors among them. On those miles, that's a 40% rise.

Company car tax on electric cars goes up a point to 10% in 2030-31, despite fleet and leasing bodies asking for it to stay at 9%. And the 100% first-year allowance for new zero-emission cars still ends on 31 March 2027, so a business buying EVs for a pool has five months left to deduct the full cost in one go. (Councils and NHS trusts don't pay corporation tax, so that’s just for business fleets.)

The £100m for lower-powered public chargers helps fleet cars and vans that charge on the street, and the Treasury reckons it's worth about £150 a year to a driver without a driveway.

Something less encouraging is eVED, 3p a mile on electric cars from April 2028, paid by the registered keeper. For a pool car, every extra mile of use (which is the whole point of having one) adds to the bill. The government says fleet operator guidance is coming later this year, alongside a mileage estimation tool and an opt-in scheme that reads mileage directly from the car itself. How it handles a car with dozens of drivers is unclear and the part I'll be watching closely.

For fleet managers: has anything in this Budget changed what you're planning to buy in the coming year?

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