‘Discriminatory’ Motability scheme must be paused until it is fit for purpose, disabled customers warn

Disabled customers have called on Motability to pause a “discriminatory” scheme that monitors how they drive, until it is accurate and fit for purpose.

They say the design of the Drive Smart scheme – which now applies to all under-30s and all new customers – threatens disabled people’s independence.

One customer said this week that the scheme represented a “shift from worry-free motoring to conditional and monitored access to mobility”.

Concerns are also mounting about separate changes that place new restrictions on Motability customers, which are a response by the company to “devastating” and “punitive” tax reforms announced by the chancellor last November, which will add about £300 million a year to the cost of running the scheme by the end of the decade.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has imposed VAT at 20 per cent on most advance payments for cars leased through the scheme and removed the current 12 per cent insurance premium tax exemption.

Only vehicles with substantial adaptations for wheelchair- and stretcher-users will be exempt from the new taxes, which will be imposed on new leases from July.

The changes by Motability include sharp cuts to the annual mileage allowance and increased excess mileage rates for new orders placed after 1 July.

Motability is halving the mileage allowance for most customers from 20,000 miles a year to 10,000 miles and increasing the excess mileage charge for anything above this from 5p per mile to 25p (or 21p for those who do not pay VAT on additional payments, such as those with a wheelchair-accessible vehicle).

It said that, without these changes, the tax changes would have added around £1,100 to the cost of each lease, with its measures designed to reduce this to around £400 on average over three years.

Disabled People Against Cuts is due to meet senior figures from Motability tomorrow (Friday) after raising concerns last month about the changes.

Meanwhile, a parliamentary petition calling on Motability to abandon its changes and criticising the government’s new taxes, has secured more than 31,000 signatures in three months – it needs to reach 100,000 names by 15 July to be considered for a debate in parliament.

In its response to the petition, the government said it had worked with Motability to “develop a suite of reforms which strikes the right balance between delivering a key service for disabled people and fairness to the taxpayer, saving over £1 billion by financial year 2030/31”.

Motability customers continue to contact Disability News Service (DNS) with their concerns about the mileage changes and the introduction of Drive Smart.

Drive Smart uses a device fitted inside the vehicle – usually with an associated mobile phone app – to measure speed, smoothness of driving and vehicle usage, scoring each of them out of 100 for every journey.

Oscar Acton (pictured), from County Durham, who has had to use a Drive Smart device after taking on a new Motability lease, told DNS that he had “major concerns” about the accuracy of the system.

He said he and other drivers have noticed “sharp reductions in scores despite safe and routine driving”.

He has already noticed unfair reductions on the app on both his usage and smoothness scores.

He called on Motability to abandon the scheme “until it is accurate, fit for purpose and does not discriminate against disabled people”; to be “more transparent about the way that these devices harvest data and calculate scores”; and to provide an easy way to dispute inaccurate scores.

Phil Swindin, a Motability customer for many years, who uses hand control adaptations to drive his vehicle, said the company appeared to have failed to make the necessary reasonable adjustments before introducing major changes to the scheme.

He told DNS: “Motability is clearly under pressure to reduce costs, but the changes announced so far appear to have been applied wholesale, without evidence that they have been meaningfully tailored to disabled customers.”

He said disabled people were describing Drive Smart “as a penalty system rather than a support tool”, with concerns that they are “being penalised for ordinary and necessary travel”.

He said the Drive Smart telematics algorithm could score the “perfectly safe acceleration, braking and steering” of drivers like himself who use hand controls as “jerky” or “atypical”, even when their driving is entirely safe and controlled.

Swindin, from Pontefract, who has worked for many years in technology, with significant experience of the Equality Act and reasonable adjustments, does not currently have to use Drive Smart but is likely to have to sign up to the scheme in the future.

He questioned whether Motability had built in “proactive, individualised reasonable adjustments” across both Drive Smart and its new mileage cap.

He said: “Telematics and mileage caps are common tools in the wider insurance market.

“The difficulty is that these tools have been applied to a disabled customer base without the proactive safeguards that the Equality Act expects.

“If Motability does not embed proactive, individualised safeguards, the changes could expose disabled customers to significant detriment and create legal, regulatory, financial and reputational risk for Motability Operations.”

He added: “A large part of my work involves identifying risks, designing safeguards, and ensuring systems do not unintentionally disadvantage disabled people.

“That is why these changes concern me.

“From everything I have seen, Drive Smart and the mileage changes are not just technical adjustments.

“For many disabled people they feel like a shift from worry-free motoring to conditional and monitored access to mobility.

“The positive side is that Motability could correct course quickly.

“With relatively modest changes, they could protect disabled people’s independence while still managing the financial pressures that are clearly real.”

Another Motability customer, who is under 30 and expects to be told soon that he will have to sign up to Drive Smart, told DNS he was “extremely concerned” about the scheme because he uses hand controls to drive.

He has pointed to reviews of the Drive Smart app, which were “very negative” and showed it was “clearly not fit for purpose” (see separate story).

He said: “Motability have clearly caved in to right-wing pressure without consulting disability groups or their own customers to understand the potential ramifications of the Drive Smart policy.

“For disabled people, a Motability vehicle is essential for independence, employment, healthcare access, family responsibilities, and daily living.

“A monitoring system that is unreliable or poorly explained could result in unjust penalties, increased insurance scrutiny, or restricted access to vehicles that many depend upon for basic participation in society.”

Responding to the concerns this week, a Motability Operations spokesperson said: “Changing the mileage allowance of future leases lowers insurance and maintenance costs and increases the vehicle’s resale cost, which reduces the cost of a lease.”

She said that additional mileage will be “charged at a rate that reflects the real cost of higher use, including maintenance, insurance and wear and tear”, while there will be an “exceptions process for very limited situations”.

In addition to customer research, she said, the company had “undertaken a comprehensive legal and regulatory review to ensure the scheme continues to support customers in a fair and responsible way, including alignment with relevant laws and FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] obligations”, but that it would “continue listening to and engaging with our customers”.

Drive Smart particularly highlights if the vehicle is driven six or more times in one day or for more than an hour without a break.

But it also measures how well the vehicle is being driven by other drivers on the lease, such as a personal assistant, and it notes when the driver’s phone is used during a journey, to raise awareness of “distracted driving”.

Each named driver on the lease has their own app which is supposed to record their driving behaviour when in the Motability vehicle.

The scheme rewards those who drive safely – offering up to £160 a year in vouchers – but those who repeatedly receive “red scores” for unsafe driving such as speeding, harsh braking or unsafe driving, risk having their lease removed and losing their car.

When the system reports a “red week” for dangerous driving, the driver receives a warning.

A second consecutive red week, or four red weeks over a 12-month period, will see that driver removed from the scheme.

Motability Operations told DNS this week that Drive Smart had been introduced in response to an increase in insurance claims and “focuses on how someone actually drives, rather than relying on indirect measures of risk like postcodes”, while it had been designed to “support and reward safer driving”.

She said early data suggested that customers using Drive Smart were having 18 per cent fewer accidents.

She said: “We’re listening closely to what our customers are telling us as we continue to review and refine how Drive Smart works.

“In particular, we know usage is one of the biggest areas of feedback.

“We are actively reviewing how it is reflected in scores to help reduce some of the concerns customers are feeling.

“High usage will not impact a lease, because we know how important the scheme is for supporting customers with freedom and independence.

“We also recognise that many of our customers have different driving needs, including those who use adaptations, and we are developing the model to better reflect this.”

She said the company was reviewing its Drive Smart data to “understand whether any patterns could be attributed to disability, such as adapted cars, which could result in a reasonable adjustment for those customers”.

She encouraged any customers with concerns about their scores to contact Motability Operations to discuss their circumstances.

And she said that journey data was recorded via a Bluetooth device in the vehicle “and only shared at the end of a trip to calculate a driving score”, while “no additional data is taken from the customer’s phone and data is only used for scoring driving characteristics to assess the likelihood of an accident”.

*Motability Foundation, the charity that oversees the Motability scheme, is a Disability News Service subscriber