Bank Holiday rentals and the cost of driving in London

With the Easter Bank Holiday period over and more Bank Holidays imminent we thought it would be helpful to give you an explanation of how our rental system at such times works.

Unlike with some other rental companies, you can rent a vehicle for only as long as you need.

If, say, you only wanted the vehicle for Good Friday, you can pick it up on the Thursday and we will insure it for you to drive home. You must not then drive it until the start of the rental day, when it will be fully insured. You only pay for the day for which you actually rented it.

Also, because we have four open yards, to which you can return your vehicle regardless of which of our depots you rented it from, you don’t need to worry about paying for extra days you don’t want just because the rental office is closed for the holiday.

Just leave the vehicle at one of our four open yards and pop the keys into the box.

The new Ultra-Low emission zone (ULEZ) charges in London

The charges are steep when it comes to vans and vehicles larger than 3.5 tonnes at £100 per day and they apply to all vehicles that are not compliant. That’s on top of the congestion charge we all have to pay.

To be compliant, a vehicle has to have a 66 (or newer) registration, in other words be no older than September 2016. If your business has to make a delivery or deliveries within the ULEZ and your vehicle is older, you will have to pay this and it can add a significant amount to your business costs.

We are increasingly getting customers specifying that they only want to rent a compliant vehicle.

However, the new charge was introduced with only two months’ warning and with a fleet of 300-plus vehicles from cars to vans to trucks, it will take time for us to replace all our vehicles.

We do have some compliant vehicles and we have more on order. In the meantime, we are doing everything we can to ensure our customers who need to be ULEZ compliant can rent a suitable vehicle but please be patient until we are able to completely replace our fleet.