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
DEBT MANAGEMENT PLAN
Car leasing on a debt management plan
A DMP is not an insolvency and nobody has to give you permission. That makes this simpler than an IVA. It also means the responsibility for getting it right sits with you, so this page is about how to do that properly.
No credit check at this stage
£299 to £499
a month, inc VAT
3 months
rental up front
36 months
road tax included
10,000
miles a year
The short version
- You do not need permission from anyone. There is no Insolvency Practitioner and no court.
- A DMP is not on any public register. What lenders see is the effect of it on your credit file, not the plan itself.
- Most cars are between £299 and £499 a month. The first three months are payable up front, from around £900.
- We read your bank statements before any credit check, and your DMP payment is one of the things we are looking at.
- Tell your DMP provider before you commit to anything. This page explains why that matters more than it sounds.
Written by Guy Prince, FCA-authorised credit broker, FRN 984955. Last updated 6 September 2026.
What a DMP actually does to your credit file
The plan itself is not recorded anywhere. There is no register of people on debt management plans the way there is for IVAs and bankruptcies, and no lender can look you up.
The plan itself
Not recorded anywhere. There is no register of people on debt management plans, and no lender can look you up.
Reduced payments
Reported on each account as partial payments, or as an arrangement to pay marker where the creditor accepted your offer.
Defaults
Six years from the date each one was added, whether or not you go on to clear the balance.
Not every plan is a formal one. Plenty of people have an arrangement without thinking of it as a debt management plan at all: an old mobile phone bill or a parking charge that was sold on to a company like Lowell or Overdales, and a small monthly payment set up to clear it. That counts, and it is worth mentioning rather than leaving it to be found on your statements. What gets asked about is the remaining term and the balance, so it is worth knowing both.
So the picture a mainstream leasing company sees is a file with several accounts in some state of arrangement or default. Their model scores that and declines you, and nobody ever tells you it was the shape of the file rather than anything about you.
Why you keep being turned down
The awkward truth about a DMP is that it produces a credit file that looks worse than your actual behaviour.
Someone who has kept to a plan for two years has made twenty four payments on time, to a budget, without missing one.
That is a better demonstration of reliability than most people with clean files could offer. But the file records the arrangement, not the discipline, so an automated decision reads it as a stream of underpayments and says no.
That gap between what the file says and what you have actually been doing is the whole reason this site exists.
The one thing that is simpler than an IVA
If you have read our page on car leasing with an IVA you will know it involves a permission step. The Insolvency Practitioner has to agree, the lender will not proceed without that agreement, and getting the two into the same room is where most people give up.
| A debt management plan | An IVA | |
|---|---|---|
| Permission for a new commitment | Nobody's to give | Your Insolvency Practitioner has to agree in writing |
| On a public register | No | Yes, the Individual Insolvency Register |
| Legally binding | No, it is an informal arrangement | Yes, on you and on your creditors |
| Leaving it | You can stop whenever you choose | It runs its agreed term |
| When it ends | It simply finishes | A completion certificate has to be issued before your credit file catches up |
That makes the process considerably easier. It also removes the safety net that the IVA process gives you, which brings us to the part of this page that matters most.
The conversation to have before you commit
Every free debt advice charity will tell you not to take on new commitments while you are repaying debts through a plan. They are right, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to sell you something.
The general rule exists because most new commitments are discretionary. A car usually is not. If you cannot get to work without one, and the car you have is failing or its agreement is ending, then going without is not a neutral choice. It is the thing that ends the plan.
The distinction that matters is whether the money is genuinely there. So:
Speak to your DMP provider first. StepChange, PayPlan, whoever administers your plan. Tell them what you are considering and ask them to review your budget with the rental in it. A car needed for work is a normal budget expense and they deal with this regularly.
Do not let the payment quietly come out of theirs. If the only way the rental fits is by reducing what your creditors receive, without telling anyone, that is how DMPs fall apart. It also tends to end with the plan collapsing and you losing the car as well, which leaves you worse off than when you started.
If your provider says the budget does not stretch, believe them. We would rather you came back in a year than took a car you cannot hold on to. We do not make money from an agreement that fails, and you will lose considerably more than we do.
If you do not currently have a plan provider, or you set the arrangement up yourself, StepChange and MoneyHelper are both free and neither will sell you anything.
What we do differently
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 that goes out of your account, including your DMP payment. Nothing touches your credit file at this stage, so if the answer is no you lose nothing.
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.
Your plan payment is not a mark against you in that assessment. It is a number, it comes out on the same day each month, and it is easier to work with than most of what appears on a bank statement. What matters is what is left after it.
Not sure whether the numbers work alongside your plan? Send us three months of statements and we will tell you within two working days.
What you will need
- From around £900 to start, and more on the dearer cars. That is the first three months' rental up front. There is no no-deposit version and there never will be.
- Income from work. £1,500 a month minimum after tax, and realistically £2,000 is where this starts to work properly. If you are applying as a company, that is the director's income.
- Three months of bank statements, full ones, every page, downloaded as PDFs from your banking app rather than photographed.
- A copy of your driving licence, front and back.
- Your plan payments up to date, and your recent statements holding up. Your plan rather than your original creditors. What gets looked at is the pattern over three months, not whether every single payment on them is perfect.
- 21 or over, with a full UK driving licence. A provisional will not do.
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.
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£320 per month
£960 to start, then 35 payments of £320 inc VAT
Photograph of the actual car.
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£320 per month
£960 to start, then 35 payments of £320 inc VAT
Most cars are between £299 and £499 a month, including VAT and road tax. Going over costs between 10p and 14p per mile plus VAT, depending on the car, and around 12p on most of them. The exact rate is written into your agreement before you sign.
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.
You will need fully comprehensive insurance, which is not included and is worth pricing before you commit rather than after.
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.
When we cannot help
Worth saying plainly, because it saves you sending us your bank statements for nothing.
- Important direct debits failing month after month, including your plan payment. 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
- If you are using an unarranged overdraft most months
- If your income is under £1,500 a month after tax, or comes only from benefits
- If you cannot cover the three months up front
- If you drive more than 20,000 miles a year
- If your plan provider has looked at the budget and told you it does not fit
- If you are under 21, or hold a provisional rather than a full UK licence
The pattern is the same across everything we do. Past trouble is fine. What gets weighed is what your statements show now, and a plan you are visibly struggling to keep to is what causes the difficulty.
Questions people ask
Not as a plan, no. There is no entry saying you are on a DMP and no public register that anyone can search. What shows is the effect on each account: reduced or partial payments, an arrangement to pay marker where the creditor accepted your offer, and defaults on some accounts. Defaults stay for six years from the date they were added.
No. A DMP is an informal arrangement with no Insolvency Practitioner and no court involved. Nobody can stop you. That said, you should tell your plan provider, for the reasons set out above.
It should not, and that is the point of getting your budget reviewed first. If the only way the rental fits is by cutting your creditor payments, the plan is likely to fail and you will lose the car too. If the money is genuinely there once the budget is looked at properly, your creditors are unaffected.
Not to us. It makes no difference to the assessment which organisation administers your plan, or whether you set it up yourself. What matters is whether you have kept to it and whether the payment fits.
No. Defaults are the commonest adverse marker there is, far more common than CCJs or IVAs, and having them does not rule you out. What matters is how recent they are and whether things have stabilised since. A file with defaults from two years ago and nothing since reads very differently from one still collecting them.
Easier, in practice. Both leave marks on your credit file, but a DMP has no permission step, no register entry and nothing legally binding, so there is less to go wrong and it moves faster.
Not at this stage. We read your bank statements first and tell you whether this is likely to work. A credit check only happens later, after you have completed the lender's own application form and agreed to it, and only if the affordability side already stacks up.
Nothing changes. Your agreement runs as it was written. Finishing the plan is good news for your credit file over time, but it has no effect on a lease already in place.
Find out where you stand
Answer a few questions and send us three months of bank statements. We will tell you within two working days whether this is likely to work, before any credit check.
If we cannot help, we will tell you why. And if the honest answer is that you should speak to your plan provider first, we will say that too.
Check if I qualify