Illegal van finance?

[e39darren]

I have had some trouble with a previous employer and im looking for some advice.
The company I worked for was a parcel delivery company and the director owned his own vans, he then made his employees go self employed and gave them the option to by the vans off him by paying weekly, he wrote up a contract saying that the employee agreed to pay £100 a week for the vans for 35 weeks and if they fell behind on payments or couldn't afford to pay anymore he would take the vans back.
He allowed the employees to change the log book over to their names.
Can anyone tell me if this was illegal credit and if so who do I report him to?
Thanks

[PurpleMoonlight]

I would say he would need a consumer credit licence to do that.

You can report him to the Office of Fair Trading.

[anonymous-user]

It may be too late, but i'd also look into how legal his demand that you go self employed was...

[Eric Mc]

I would expect that he would not have been allowed to "sell" the vehicles or pass the loan on to a third party without express permission from the finance company he was using to the finance the vans in the first place.

Following on from your thread in the "Employment" forum, I would suggest that you put all this in the past now and devote your energies to finding a new employment of some sort.

[davepoth]

Eric Mc said:

I would expect that he would not have been allowed to "sell" the vehicles or pass the loan on to a third party without express permission from the finance company he was using to the finance the vans in the first place.

Following on from your thread in the "Employment" forum, I would suggest that you put all this in the past now and devote your energies to finding a new employment of some sort.

Eric, sound advice there, and I may be reading too much into the OP, but I'd guess we're in a situation where the OP needs the van for his new job, and the old employer would probably like it back?

[PurpleMoonlight]

Eric Mc said:

I would expect that he would not have been allowed to "sell" the vehicles or pass the loan on to a third party without express permission from the finance company he was using to the finance the vans in the first place.

The OP said the vans were owned. Why do you think they were financed?

[Eric Mc]

PurpleMoonlight said:

Eric Mc said:

I would expect that he would not have been allowed to "sell" the vehicles or pass the loan on to a third party without express permission from the finance company he was using to the finance the vans in the first place.

The OP said the vans were owned. Why do you think they were financed?

I was guessing. However, I am sure the OP hasn't really got a clue as to what arrangements his "bosses" had regarding "ownership" of the van fleet i.e. whether they were -

owned outright
under an HP finance agreement
under a lease agreement
under some other form of finance such as a bank loan

Many people assume that assets are owned by the operations they work for whereas in reality they are often "owned" by some sort of finance company and merely operated by the business.