End-of-lease charges are one of those costs that arrive after the car has gone, when there is nothing left to do about them. A walk-round a few weeks early puts the decisions back in your hands.
What you are being measured against
An inspector assesses the car against a fair wear and tear standard — most UK lease companies use the BVRLA guidance, and your own agreement will say what applies to you. Wear consistent with the car’s age and mileage is expected and should not be charged. Damage beyond that can be.
Read your own contract for the detail. Standards differ between companies, and the version that matters is the one you signed.
Look at it properly first
The damage that gets written up is usually damage you stopped noticing months ago. To see the car the way an inspector will:
- Wash it first. Road film hides scratches and flatters paint.
- Use daylight, not a garage light. Overcast daylight is ideal.
- Look along each panel, not at it. Crouch down and sight across the surface at a shallow angle — dents and ripples appear that are invisible head-on.
- Get down to bumper level. Front and rear bumper corners take most of the damage and sit below normal eye line.
- Write it down as you go. A list you can price is more use than a vague sense that the car is a bit tatty.
The checklist
This is the cosmetic damage that commonly attracts a charge:
- Bumper scuffs and scrapes. Corners above all, plus the top edge of the rear bumper where things have been dragged in and out of the boot.
- Door dings and small dents. Trolley dinks and car-park knocks, especially where the paint has been broken or creased.
- Scratches. The usual test is your fingernail: if it catches in the scratch, it has gone through the lacquer and is likely chargeable. If it glides over, it may polish out.
- Stone chips. Individually minor, but clusters on the bonnet and the leading edges of the wings and roof get noted — and any chip that has gone through to bare metal counts as damage rather than wear.
- Wing mirror casings. Easy to scuff on a gatepost, easy to forget.
- Alloy wheels and tyres. Kerbing on the rims is one of the most commonly charged items of all. Alloy refurbishment is a separate specialist service and not something we cover, so get that quoted elsewhere — while you are down there, check tread depth and that the tyres are an acceptable make and matched across each axle.
- Glass and lights. Chips or cracks in the windscreen, and cracked lamp lenses.
- Interior. Scuffed door sill trims, marks and tears on seats, damage to the boot lip and load area.
- Missing items. The second key, the locking wheel nut key, the parcel shelf, charging cables, the boot floor tools and the service history. Missing items get charged at the lease company’s replacement rates, and those are rarely cheap.
Why it pays to sort it before you hand the car back
Once damage is written up on the inspection report, the charge is set at the lease company’s rates and you have very little say in it. Dealing with cosmetic damage beforehand means you choose what gets repaired, by whom, and at what price.
That said — do not panic-repair everything. Light, even wear appropriate to the car’s age and mileage is exactly what fair wear and tear allows for, and paying to make a three-year-old car look new is money you will not get back. The items worth acting on are the ones clearly beyond that standard: broken paint, dents, deep scratches, chips through to metal.
Give yourself some time
Leave the walk-round until the week of collection and your options narrow to whatever can be booked at short notice. A few weeks out, you can get the damage assessed, decide what is worth doing and have it repaired without rushing.
We cover exactly this kind of work, mobile, on cars still in use — including small fleets going back together. There is more on how that works on our fleet and lease return repairs page.