www.iva.co.uk

Hello all - first post.

Basically, my car has finally packed up. WIthout a car I cannot get to work - literally. Not only that, having a car is a condition of my contract of employment.

I have no money to get the car repaired - estimated bill is around £500+ (head gasket blown) - nor do I have any money to get a new car.

Now, the thing is, my employer operates a car loan for managers (of which I am one). However, they only loan amounts that will get a 'decent' car - unlike my 17-year old banger. (I regularly get the mickey taken out of me by other members of staff as I have the oldest vehicle in the car park, but that's another story I guess...)

I informed my IP (Payplan) about this a little while ago when my car began playing up but they told me that I would not be allowed to take a loan from my employers. Seriously, the last thing I want to do is take on more credit but I will lose my job pretty sharpish if I do not have a car. I tried explaining to my IP that as I spend approx £280 a month on petrol (I have a very uneconomical 2.3L car and a 45mile round trip to work) that I could probably get a works loan, get a smaller more economical car and not have any net increase in expenditure but they still refused.

So, now I face either driving to work tomorrow in a car that is likely to seize up at any moment or I ring in sick or try to use up my leave at short notice - that will buy me a week's grace.

What to do now?

Get back on the phone to payplan. You may find they can offer a payment break to fund the repair,or to go towards a new banger.

If your payments to creditors wouldnt be affected by the loan from work then I cant see why they wouldnt let you do it? Do the work know about the iva and do they credit check for the loan?

2.3L engine,take it you visit the petrol station frequently??

Paul

Thanks - work doesn't know about IVA and I'd rather not tell them. Not sure if they do credit checks for the loan. I don't work in the finance team but I am a budget holder and manage a budget of around £100,000 a year so I'm not sure it would go down too well if they knew I am in an IVA.

Sometimes it feels like I visit the petrol station everyday as I'm so often running on empty. The last few days every month before pay day are a nightmare and last week was a typical scenario with me borrowing £10 from my daughter on Thursday so I could get to/from work. I filled it up on Friday when I got paid - £77!

I was in the same position as you the other month but have decided to give up on the car and jump the bus. Payplan said they could offer me a payment break however it would have to be paid back by the end of my review period which is next month, couldn't afford to pay back £800.00 over 2 months so opting to use public transport.

Are you able to email me scooby? I will look into you case and make sure we review your request.

I wonder why you were given this advice by your IP firm. Credit is most certainly allowed during an IVA, so long as the reasons are justified and your IP agrees to the request. Thank goodness that via the forum this has hit an IP directly, who is going to look into this for you, and do let us know how you get on with the request.

Nick Payne wrote:

Are you able to email me scooby? I will look into you case and make sure we review your request.

Hi Nick - thanks for your post. I've just tried to email you but get a message saying 'emailing has been discontinued to prevent spamming'.

scoobydooby - if having a car is a condition of your contact of employment, I assume that you receive an allowance for the car from your employer. If so, could the allowance be offset against the employee loan instead?
I’m with PayPlan and they agreed to me leasing a car through my job, a public sector staff car leasing scheme, as my own car had given up the ghost. Payplan said that it was OK as long as it didn’t affect my ability to maintain my payments. I got this in writing from them which is something I insist on as months or years later, “I said/they said” isn’t much help!

Hi Sensible - yeah, I get £80 a month. I too am public sector.

Back to an earlier post - I live in a small market town and work in another small market town 23 miles away. Sadly there is no direct public transport links between the two towns. Furthermore, I have to go to an off-site meetings at least once a week so going on the bus/train is a non-starter for me.

Scoobydooby if you click on Nick's name on his picture to the left of this post it will bring up his profile and you can see his email address that way. Hope things get sorted for you soon. x

Hi Scoobydooby,
I had a lease car from public sector and wasn't credit checked as they have access to your wages to deduct the money! Not sure if your case will be the same. I have since left public sector and negotiated with DFD to get HP for a car with no problem. They were happy as long as it wouldn't impact on my ability to pay into the IVA. It is actually slightly less than what I was paying through work.
I'm sure you'll get things sorted.

Ah! Got it. Thanks.

Hi I'm also with payplan and my car blew up and they allowed my to arrange for my mother to take out a £5000 loan in her name and that I pay it £125 a month, this is now an allowance and is taken out of my monthly over time so it really costs me nothing as that would of been paid over anyway, hope this helps and I have also been able to take 2 payment breaks when the other car needed a new abs pump (£650, i wrote a letter explaining that if I didn't have a car I couldn't work and if I could work the IVA would fail