Photograph of the actual car.
MG 3
1.5 VTi-TECH Exclusive (Nav)
Manual · 2022 · 36,000 miles · Black
£275 per month
£825 to start, then 35 payments of £275 inc VAT
BAD CREDIT CAR LEASING
Bad credit car leasing
If you've been turned down by the mainstream leasing companies, it usually isn't because you can't afford the car. It's because a computer never got as far as asking.
Takes about five minutes
£299 to £499
a month, inc VAT
3 months
rental up front
36 months
road tax included
10,000
miles a year
Fresh Start arranges car leases for people with CCJs, defaults, an IVA, a debt management plan, or a bankruptcy behind them. The lender works the other way round from the big brokers: they read three months of your bank statements first, and only run a credit check if the affordability side already stacks up.
This page explains exactly how that works, what you'll need, and who we can't help.
Written by Guy Prince, FCA-authorised credit broker, FRN 984955. Last updated 6 September 2026.
The short version
- Most cars are between £299 and £499 a month, including VAT and road tax. Occasionally something comes in below that.
- You pay the first three months up front, somewhere between £900 and £1,200 depending on the car. There's no no-deposit option.
- You need income from work. £1,500 a month minimum after tax, and realistically £2,000 is where it starts working properly.
- Your bank statements are read before any credit check happens.
- Past problems are fine. What matters now is what your bank statements show over three months.
What "bad credit" actually covers
People arrive here having been told they have bad credit without ever being told what that means. In practice it's one or more of:
CCJsDefaultsMissed or late paymentsA debt management planAn IVAA discharged bankruptcyA thin file, meaning no credit history at all
We can work with all of those. What we cannot work with is a picture that says the money is not there today. See "When we can't help" further down.
Why the mainstream companies say no
It's worth understanding, because it explains why your situation isn't as hopeless as they made it feel.
What a scorecard sees
- How many searches are on your file
- How old your accounts are
- That something once went wrong
- A number, in about four seconds
What a person sees
- Three months of wages arriving on time
- What actually goes out each month
- Whether it went wrong once or is still going wrong
- Why it happened, if you tell them
A large leasing broker will typically pass your application to a panel of funders, who score it automatically. That score is built from your credit file (the number of searches, the age of your accounts, whether anything has ever gone wrong) and it produces a yes or a no in seconds. Nobody reads anything. Nobody looks at what you actually earn or what you actually spend.
That system works perfectly well for someone with a clean file. For everyone else it's a blunt instrument. A single CCJ from four years ago, long since settled, can outweigh three years of steady wages and never missing a payment since.
The funders behind those panels also set the criteria, and most of them simply don't want adverse credit at any price. So the broker isn't necessarily judging you; often they've got nowhere to place you.
Specialist lessors like ours work differently because they own their cars outright rather than borrowing against a funder's criteria. That means a person can make the decision instead of an algorithm. You can check that any firm you deal with is genuinely authorised on the FCA Financial Services Register, including us.
How the decision actually gets made
Three months of bank statements, read by the person who assesses your application, before any credit check.
They are answering one question: would these payments sit comfortably alongside everything else this person already pays?
Not "is their score high enough". Not "have they ever had a problem". Whether the money is genuinely there, month after month, once everything else has gone out.
There's no formula and no pass mark. They are looking at what actually leaves your account each month (rent or mortgage, bills, food, fuel, anything you're already repaying) and whether there is comfortably enough left over to cover the car on top. If there is, the credit file becomes a much smaller part of the conversation. If you want to know more about how a lease itself affects your file, our page on does leasing a car affect your credit score covers it in detail.
1
Your bank statements are read first
Three months of them, plus a copy of your driving licence. Someone at the lender reads them properly and works out whether the payment would sit comfortably alongside everything else you pay.
2
Nothing touches your credit file yet
No search, no footprint, no record that you asked. If the answer is no, you lose nothing.
3
You hear back within two working days
Either way, with the reason if it is a no.
4
The credit check comes last
Only once affordability is established. By then the conversation is about what happened, not whether to bother.
What else they look at
The arithmetic is most of it, but not all. On the statements they will also notice:
- Returned or bounced direct debits. More than the occasional one is the single biggest reason an application doesn't go further.
- How steady the income is. Regular wages from the same employer read very differently from income that swings around month to month.
- Whether payday lending is in the picture, and how recently.
- Regular gambling transactions, which most lenders treat as a problem regardless of the rest. Worth knowing before you send anything rather than after.
None of that is a character test. It's the same question in a different form: is the money reliably there?
If you already have a car on finance and the payments go out by direct debit every month without failing, that counts in your favour rather than against you. It shows you are used to managing exactly this commitment, and the longer you have been doing it the better it reads.
A difficult month is not a difficult pattern
This is worth being clear about, because a lot of people talk themselves out of applying over something small.
A credit card payment missed a couple of months ago is not going to stop anything. Nor is a direct debit that bounced because your wages landed a day later than the bill went out. Things like that happen to people with immaculate credit files and nobody thinks twice about them.
What does cause a problem is a run of them. Important direct debits failing month after month says the money is not there, and no amount of affordability on paper argues with three months of statements showing otherwise.
The difference between those two is usually obvious to somebody reading the statements. And if there is a reason for a bad month, a period of sick pay, a job change, a bill that landed twice, say so on the application. There is a box for exactly that, and an explanation is worth more than you would expect.
Not sure whether your file is the problem? Send us three months of statements and we will tell you within two working days.
A recent example
We recently helped a man whose employer stopped providing company cars and gave everyone a £550 a month allowance instead. Suddenly he needed to sort out his own vehicle, and he had two CCJs from a couple of years earlier and a low credit score.
On paper he is exactly the sort of customer any lender should want. Around £55,000 a year, five or six years in the same job, out seeing clients most weeks, and an employer who wants him in something reliable and presentable. Every automated decision said no.
He had been looking at something premium. What he took was a Nissan Qashqai automatic at £450 a month, which does the job, keeps his employer happy and was approved in days rather than never.
Be ready to say what happened
Because a person reads your application rather than a computer scoring it, you may well get asked about what is on your file. What was that CCJ for. Is there a plan in place. What is left to pay on it.
That is not an interrogation and it is not there to catch you out. It is the part of the process where you get to explain something a credit score cannot, and it is often what turns a no into a yes.
So it helps to know your own history before you apply. Someone who can say "that was a joint account after my marriage ended, it was settled last year" is in a much better position than someone who says they do not know what it is. Not because one is more deserving, but because one of them has given the person reading it something to work with.
You do not need to write an essay. The application form asks you to describe your credit history in your own words, and a few honest sentences there does more than you would expect.
What you'll need
- From around £900 to start, and more on the dearer cars. The first three months' rental. There's no no-deposit version.
- Income from work. Employed or self-employed. £1,500 a month after tax is the floor; £2,000 and above is where it starts working comfortably. Benefits, child benefit and other regular income all count, but on top of earned income, not instead of it.
- Payments up to date right now. Not behind, not in arrears, no bounced direct debits over the last few months.
- Three months of bank statements: full statements, every page, as PDFs from your banking app, for the account your wages are paid into.
- A photo of your driving licence, front and back.
- 21 or over, with a full UK driving licence. A provisional will not do. An address in mainland England or Wales. Scotland isn't impossible, but ask before you apply.
That's it. No payslips at this stage, no proof of address, no three years of employment history. Those come later, and only if the affordability works.
For the full list of what you need, including how to get your bank statements right, see our guide.
What it costs
£299 to £499
a month, inc VAT
£900+
three months up front
36
months, road tax in
10,000
miles a year
Check if I can get this car
Photograph of the actual car.
BMW i3
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£320 per month
£960 to start, then 35 payments of £320 inc VAT
Photograph of the actual car.
Renault Zoe
100kW S Edition R135 50kWh Rapid Charge
AUTO · 2022 · 23,000 miles · Highland Grey
£320 per month
£960 to start, then 35 payments of £320 inc VAT
Going over the mileage costs between 10p and 14p per mile plus VAT, around 12p on most cars. Servicing, tyres, MOT and insurance are yours. Delivery and collection are free in mainland England and Wales.
Ten thousand miles a year is the standard allowance. Higher mileage quotes are available up to twenty thousand a year, so ask if you need more.
At the end you hand the car back. There's no option to buy it.
Every car comes with at least twelve months' warranty, and each one is serviced, inspected and put right before it goes out. Delivery usually takes seven to ten days from order.
Delivery and collection are free anywhere in mainland England and Wales. Scotland is not something we can cover, so please get in touch before applying if that is where you are.
Servicing, tyres, MOT and insurance are not included. These are customer maintained agreements, so budget for those separately.
Insurance: the cost people forget
You'll need fully comprehensive insurance for the whole agreement. That's a condition of every lease, not something we've added.
It's worth getting a couple of quotes before you apply rather than after. Two reasons. Insurance on a two-year-old car is usually more than on the ten-year-old one you might be replacing. And if you pay monthly rather than annually, most insurers run a credit check to set that up, which means the same credit history that brought you to this page can push the monthly premium up, or occasionally rule it out.
Nobody else in this corner of the market mentions this, and it catches people out. Five minutes on a comparison site before you apply will tell you what you're really committing to.
Leasing or buying on finance?
Plenty of people arrive here not minding which. They want a car for a monthly payment. It's worth understanding the difference, because one of them will suit you better.
| Leasing | Buying on finance | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost, same car | Usually lower | Usually higher |
| At the end | You hand it back | It's yours |
| Mileage | Capped at 10,000 a year as standard, up to 20,000 on request, extra miles charged | Drive what you like |
| Condition | Charged for damage beyond fair wear and tear | Your car, your problem |
| If values crash | Not your risk | Your risk |
| Getting approved with poor credit | Specialist lessors will look at affordability | Depends heavily on the lender |
Leasing suits you if you want the lowest monthly payment for a decent car, you do ordinary mileage, and you don't mind not owning it.
Buying suits you better if you cover big miles, you want something to show for the payments at the end, or you're likely to want to sell it partway through.
We only do leasing. If buying is genuinely what you need, we'd rather tell you now than take you through an application for the wrong product.
If things go wrong later
Nobody likes thinking about this at the start, but you're taking on three years and things happen.
Tell them as soon as you know. If you lose your job, your hours get cut, or you can see a problem coming, contact the leasing company straight away. Do it before you miss a payment, not after.
Lenders and leasing companies are required to treat customers in financial difficulty fairly, and to try to find a way through. What that looks like varies: it's genuinely case by case and depends on your situation and theirs. We can't promise you what any lender would agree to, and you should be wary of anyone who does.
What we can tell you is that the outcome is almost always better for people who pick up the phone early. Burying your head and hoping it goes away is the one approach that reliably makes things worse.
Free, independent help is available from MoneyHelper (moneyhelper.org.uk) and StepChange (stepchange.org), and it's worth talking to them at the same time.
Your situation
CCJs
One, two or more. What matters is whether you can explain them and whether you are dealing with them.
→ Car leasing with a CCJAn IVA
Some of the work our lender does most. Your Insolvency Practitioner has to agree, and the order it happens in matters.
→ Car leasing with an IVABankruptcy
Possible once you are discharged, and you can start before that, subject to it completing.
→ Car leasing after bankruptcyA debt management plan
Workable, as long as you are keeping to it and the new payment genuinely fits alongside it.
→ Car leasing on a debt management planDefaults and missed payments
The commonest marks of all, and rarely the thing that stops an application on its own.
No page yet, so no link on this card
No credit history at all
New to the UK, never borrowed, always paid cash. Mainstream lenders find this almost as hard as a poor file. We do not.
→ Non status car leasingWhen we can't help
We'd rather put this on the page than find out after you've sent us your bank statements.
- You can't cover the first three months up front. There is no no-deposit option, and there never will be.
- Your income is from benefits or other sources only. There has to be earned income alongside it.
- Important direct debits failing month after month. One or two that bounced and were sorted out is not the issue. A pattern is.
- If more than two or three direct debits have bounced in the last three months.
- You drive more than 20,000 miles a year. The excess mileage would cost you more than the car is worth to you.
- You've been declared bankrupt and haven't been discharged yet.
- You are under 21, or hold a provisional rather than a full UK licence.
If that's you today, it may not be you in a year. Come back to us.
Five things you've probably been told that aren't true
You may have been told
"There's such a thing as no credit check car leasing."
There isn't, in the way it's usually sold. Almost anyone handing over a car worth thousands of pounds wants to know something about who they're giving it to. Where a company genuinely doesn't check, the risk is normally priced into what you pay. See our page on no credit check car leasing.
You may have been told
"You'll need a guarantor."
Not with us. We don't arrange guarantor agreements, and you don't need someone else to sign for you.
You may have been told
"Leasing works out more expensive."
Not usually, month to month, for the same car. You're paying for the use of it rather than the whole value, which is why the monthly figure is lower. What you don't get is anything to show for it at the end.
You may have been told
"A CCJ means an automatic no."
It doesn't. There is no number at which we stop looking. What gets weighed is whether you can say what each judgment was for, whether you are dealing with them, and whether the payments still work alongside a car.
You may have been told
"Applying will damage your credit score."
Not at the first stage. Nothing touches your file while your affordability is being assessed. The credit search only happens later, and only if things already look positive, and we tell you before it does.
Questions people ask
Often, yes, if you can afford it. That's the whole distinction. A poor credit file doesn't stop you, but a budget that won't take the payment does.
Not in the way the phrase is normally used. We do run a credit check, and so does almost anyone handing over a car worth thousands of pounds. What we do differently is the order: your bank statements are read first, and the credit check only happens if the affordability already works. If a company tells you they won't check your credit at all, that isn't them doing you a favour. It's them not looking.
There isn't a number. The lender doesn't decide on the score; they decide on the bank statements. The credit check happens afterwards, and it's there to see what the problems were and whether you've dealt with them, not to produce a pass mark.
Not at the first stage. Nothing touches your credit file while your affordability is being assessed. If it looks positive, the next step is a full credit search, which is recorded, and we tell you before that happens.
No. We don't arrange guarantor agreements.
No. Every agreement starts with three months' rental up front. It's the main reason we can help people the mainstream companies won't, so it isn't something that can be waived.
Two to three years old, typically with 23,000 to 35,000 miles on them. Practical rather than exciting, the sort of car that gets you to work and back without drama.
You'll hear from us within two working days of sending your documents, either way.
We tell you, and we tell you why. If we stopped you at the questions, no credit check has been run and nothing has touched your file. If you'd sent documents, we delete them within 30 days.
There are more of these on our car leasing questions and answers page, including delivery, mileage, road tax and what happens at the end of the three years.
Find out where you stand
It takes about five minutes, and nothing touches your credit file. If we can't help, we'll tell you why.
Check if I qualify