The Salvation Army is to choose its company cars through a contract hire scheme after it became too expensive to purchase the cars outright.

It has also implemented a sale and lease back on over 50 of its existing cars.

This has meant that the replacement cycle for all of its cars was reduced from six years to three years.

Peter Bonney, fleet controller at the charity, said it was no longer financially viable to run cars on a six year cycle because of the cost as they get older. He added that contract hire meant that it could forecast monthly costs and that there was now no residual value risk.