Will I be charged for scratches at the end of lease?
Quick answer: Yes, you can be charged for scratches at the end of a lease. Under fair wear and tear, a single scratch under 25 mm is acceptable provided the clear coat isn't broken; a cluster of scratches on one panel, anything longer, or anything cutting through to primer or metal is chargeable. Most marks either polish out cheaply with paintwork correction, get tidied with a cosmetic repair, or need a full repaint -- so it is almost always worth trying to polish first.
Scratches are the single trickiest item on most end-of-lease inspections. They sit on a wide spectrum: at one end, faint wash marks that only catch the light off-angle; at the other, a key-scratch running the length of a car and cutting straight through to bare metal. Because the damage varies so much, and because the BVRLA fair wear and tear guide still leaves the final call to the lessor, two cars that look similar in the inspection bay can come back with very different recharge bills. Understanding where the line falls is what lets you decide whether to act before hand-back or let it ride.
What the fair wear and tear guide actually says about scratches
The BVRLA fair wear and tear standard treats a single scratch of less than 25 mm as acceptable, provided the paintwork isn't broken: the clear coat is still intact and no primer or metal is showing. Anything longer than that, anything that has cut through the paintwork, or a cluster of shorter scratches grouped on one panel will normally be chargeable. The guide gives inspectors a framework rather than a price list, and lessors apply their own rates on top of it. That is why the same defect can cost one driver £80 and another driver £250: the wording in the guide is consistent, but the contract behind it is not.
It also helps to know what the guide is really measuring. The 25 mm threshold is about the length of a single mark; depth is the separate, decisive question. A 20 mm scratch that has gone through to primer is more likely to draw a charge than a 30 mm one that has only hazed the lacquer, because broken paint invites corrosion and that is what the lessor is protecting against.
How inspectors grade a scratch
End-of-lease inspectors work to a routine, and once you have seen a few reports the pattern is obvious. They are not looking for perfection; they are looking for the marks the guide tells them to flag, and they record them in a way that will stand up if you query the invoice. Four things decide the outcome:
- Length, measured against a ruler or a credit-card edge: the 25 mm threshold is a hard line for a single mark.
- Depth: has it broken the clear coat, or is it only sitting in the top layer? A fingernail dragged across the mark tells most inspectors what they need to know.
- Grouping and location: multiple short scratches on one panel tend to be treated as one defect, and a scuff on a bumper corner is read differently to a line across a door.
- Whether it photographs: if the inspector can capture it in daylight, expect it on the report; a mark that vanishes under their phone camera usually does not.
What it usually costs to put right
Once a chargeable scratch has been flagged there are broadly three outcomes, and the gap between them is large. If the clear coat is unbroken, paintwork correction will often lift the mark out entirely for a fraction of a repaint cost, because all you are doing is levelling the lacquer back to a clean surface. Where the clear coat has been breached but the damage is contained, a localised SMART repair can colour-match and blend a small area without touching the surrounding panel. If the scratch runs the length of a door or straight through to metal, the panel will usually be flatted, primed and resprayed: that is where the recharge figures climb fastest, because you are now paying for panel time, paint and blending into the adjacent panels.
The reason this matters before hand-back is that the lessor charges you the respray price whether or not the mark genuinely needed a respray. They are not going to attempt a polish on your behalf and pass on the saving. So the decision sits with you: spend a little to find out whether a mark will polish out, or hand the car back and let the recharge assume the worst.
A scratch we talked down from a respray
One that stuck with the workshop: a 100 mm scratch with broken paint along part of its length. On paper that is a respray, and a lessor would have invoiced it as one. Matt polished most of the scratch away until only about 25 mm of genuinely broken paint remained, then touched in that small section by hand. The result sits right on the borderline of what counts as an 'acceptable repair', but the alternative was the full panel being stripped and the recharge reflecting the full respray price. Tom, our operations manager, makes the same point to most lease customers who come in worried: getting a second opinion before the hand-back inspection almost always pays for itself, because the only marks worth spending money on are the ones that would otherwise be charged at respray rates.
What to do before the inspection
The work you do before hand-back is mostly evidence-gathering and quick wins, not bodywork. A clean, well-lit car photographs honestly, and honest photographs are your protection if the invoice later disagrees with what you remember. Keep these few steps tight:
- Wash the car and photograph every scratch in daylight, from the angle it actually shows up: these images are your evidence if the end-of-lease invoice looks wrong.
- Measure anything near the 25 mm line: borderline single marks are the easiest wins, and a mark that measures under is hard for an inspector to charge.
- Try a proper machine polish first on anything where the clear coat is clearly still intact.
- Get a price for a cosmetic repair and compare it to the likely recharge before committing to any paint work.
The DIY temptation, and where it goes wrong
This is the part people get caught on. The bottom line is simple enough -- most scratches either polish out cheaply or need a respray that is expensive -- but the trap is in the middle, where a scratch looks polishable and someone reaches for a kit. A hand-applied scratch-remover or a brush-in-the-cap touch-up bottle can absolutely improve a faint mark. It can just as easily make a chargeable scratch worse: machine-polishing without measuring lacquer thickness burns through the clear coat on edges and high points; touch-up paint applied thick stands proud, traps a colour mismatch and reads on the report as a botched repair, which is treated more harshly than the honest scratch underneath it.
That is the real calculation. A polish or SMART repair is worth attempting only when it costs less than the expected recharge and is unlikely to leave a worse mark than the original. A repair that has to be stripped and redone pushes the recharge up, not down. The equipment, the lacquer-depth gauge and the colour-matching are exactly the things that separate a repair that disappears from one that draws a fresh charge, which is why the skill behind the fix matters at least as much as its price. For the full decision -- when polishing, a SMART repair, or touch-up paint each makes sense versus simply accepting the charge -- see should I repair scratches on my leased car?