COVID-19 Update 20/05/2020

Following recent Government announcements, here’s the latest information on COVID-19 restrictions and the Motability Scheme.

While we expect to see dealers gradually opening in England from 1 June, the impact of weeks of COVID-19 disruption means the Scheme will not open immediately for new applications.

So we can work through backlogs in both vehicle sales and purchases, we will take a phased approach for applications. Priority will go to around 43,000 orders that had already been placed before lockdown. We will aim to resume these and arrange delivery as soon as possible, subject to this being done in a COVID-19 safe environment.

Once this is underway, we will start to invite applications from customers who have had their leases extended during the lockdown, in order of their original end of contract date. When possible, we will also re-open the Scheme to brand new customers.  As soon as we are able to start accepting new applications we will publish prices on the website through our car search tool.

While we know this news may be disappointing, we ask for your patience as we restart our operation after weeks of dealer closures and business disruption. It will be vital to phase these steps carefully until we are really confident about sales of returning vehicles. We will only be able to lift all restrictions on future customer orders when we know that we can sell used cars in large numbers in a properly functioning marketplace.

It may be some months before the Scheme has caught up with applications for renewing customers, so in the meantime, customers should expect to see more extensions to existing leases over the next few months. We will also continue to support customers with lease extensions should new cars take longer to be delivered owing to worldwide disruption in manufacturing or supply of parts.

Our focus remains on keeping customers mobile, and safe. Together with our Scheme partners, we have continued to support customers throughout lockdown, and look forward to building back our wider operations. This will include working closely with our dealer partners to build confidence in a safe and secure dealership environment.

We are closely monitoring the situation, especially with regard to the changing vehicle supply situation, and will provide regular updates here on our website. Our Frequently Asked Questions are updated regularly, so please keep an eye on these; if you have a question, you may well find the answer here.