Fleet use of franchise dealers for service, maintenance and repair (SMR) has fallen to a new low, analysis from 1link suggests.
A 1link Index dataset starting in January 2020, taken from company’s industry standard 1link Service Network platform, shows 54% of jobs went to these suppliers. However, by late 2025, it had fallen to 41% and stayed that way through to the end of the first quarter of this year.
Tim Meadows, CCO at 1link, said: “Considerable upwards pressures on both parts and labour costs have been seen during recent years, and fleets have reacted by making more use of lower priced, non-franchise workshops in order to minimise these increases.”
"...we’ve increasingly seen vans and lower cost cars directed towards independent SMR outlets. For these vehicles, there is less sensitivity to having a non-franchise stamp on the service book and a reduced need for particular skills and workshop equipment."
He pointed to data showing average hourly rates for franchise dealers recorded by 1link grew from an average of £70 in January 2020 to £93 in March 2026 – an increase of 32% – while non-franchise workshops rose from £43 in January 2020 to £55 in February 2026 – climbing by 27%.
Tim continued: “The move towards non-franchise is not a blanket trend and there are subtleties at play. Mainstream company cars, especially from prestige brands, still tend to be serviced at franchise dealers, partially because of their specialist expertise and especially because of the requirements of electric vehicles, but also in order to preserve residual values.
“However, we’ve increasingly seen vans and lower cost cars directed towards independent SMR outlets. For these vehicles, there is less sensitivity to having a non-franchise stamp on the service book and a reduced need for particular skills and workshop equipment.
“A further element has been the general ageing of fleets. Older vehicles are also much more likely to be maintained outside franchise networks, again because their value is lower and the used market has different expectations about where they were serviced.”
Tim noted a further contributing factor was the growing expertise and professionalism of independent garages.
“Fleets have spent considerable time developing greater knowledge about which non-franchise outlets meet their needs in terms of everything from technical capabilities to service levels. Some are very impressive indeed and can handle almost any kind of vehicle.”
1link Service Network is used by UK fleets to process almost 20,000 company car, van and truck service, maintenance and repair job sheets every day from fleets totalling 4.9 million vehicles working with over 8,500 suppliers.
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