I wouldnt sign to have a amount taken out for that.I sooner have the layoff.Sounds like you work for a crap company to me.

It doesn't surprise me that employers are starting to not only make profit out of engineers work and then make the engineer pay for , in effect working for them as well.
It seems that employers have forgotten that the backbone of any company is their after sales service and it is the dedicated engineers that provide the extra income and " bread and butter " by looking after the customer and finding defects during the routine services.
After 30 years of being a part of it I have lost all faith in the industry when it costs an engineer to do the job that others profit from.

Its not so much contract of employment its the company policy is changing and there trying to get all the engineers to sign a bit of paper accepting it and authorising the company to take out there wages
Every engineer i know some were along the road of the life of the van has a knock or 2 its working van working in bad environments and also look at things ure sometime your asked to carry in your van.
I can see there point with the cost they must have to pay to lease companys to get the lease vans back up to a standard but i think its unfair to pass it onto engineers.
I think this one policy they are going to lose a lot of engineers i just some how cant see anyone signing it

I would imagine that your contract of employment had a section written in it regarding the general conditions of using the company vehicle.
This would normally state that it is your responsibility to keep the van in a reasonable condition however, I would suggest that you read through your contract as I have never seen anything written that states an employee would be liable for any repairs unless it was caused by negligence in which case some companies have a clause that the excess for insurance is paid for by the employee.
Normal wear and tear including dents and scratches caused by stone chips are in general accepted by the lease company as unavoidable.

Hello Eddie

The short answer to your question is no. But the the legal answer may be different. If the van has been willfully neglected and abused, that could be construed as gross misconduct and result in dismissal and an attempt to recover some costs.

the next question would be "at what point did they tell you".
I personally would hope they didn't charge me for the wear and tear of the van, and would wonder what "they" are doing for the portion of the profit "they" get to keep, (don't "they" share in the risk as well as the profit?) and who pays if the tech/engineer walks out.

Anything chargeable as in dents scratches at the end of a lease just much the same as you would charge a customer for damage on rental trucks so if a lease company says your van will cost say £1500 to repair it comes directly out of the engineers wages

that would greatly depend on the details.
what repairs? when did the company refuse to make those repairs under normal conditions and why were the repairs needed?