VMS Fleet Management is to be wound down with the potential loss of hundreds of jobs after administrators failed to secure a buyer for the business as a going concern.

The commercial vehicle leasing and fleet management company, which supplied vans to major supermarket chains including Waitrose and Iceland, officially collapsed into administration on 15 October 2026.

Licensed insolvency practitioners Jeremy Karr, Simon Killick and Joanne Hammond, partners at Begbies Traynor Group (BTG), were appointed joint administrators of VMS by the company’s qualifying floating charge holder.

VMS, which ran a fleet of 6,750 vehicles, had experienced “financial difficulties following operational difficulties with an invoice finance facility” and a winding up petition being presented by HMRC against the company, which is due to be heard later in the month.

While BTG had tried to find buyers for VMS as a going concern, “this was not achievable as no proceedable offers for the business as a going concern were forthcoming”. The appointed joint administrators will now carry out a controlled wind down of the business.

Jeremy Karr, partner at BTG, said: “As we begin a controlled wind down of the business, our immediate priority is to manage the unavoidable redundancies and associated employee claims, secure physical assets, pursue debtor recoveries and begin investigations into the asset position and the conduct of the business to realise value and deliver the best outcome for creditors.

“We have been able to commence this work and attend all of the trading premises thanks to assistance from our colleagues across our offices nationally, with BTG staff from Scotland, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Colchester, Brighton and Exeter assisting with the wind down.

“Further information, as the case develops and as we progress our investigations, will be reported to stakeholders in line with our statutory requirements and in due course.”

Administrators have not disclosed the exact number of redundancies, but the workforce affected by the closure is understood to be in the hundreds.

Prior to entering administration, the National Body Repair Association (NBRA) said that VMS had completely frozen payments to its garage networks, repair workshops and suppliers to prevent preferential creditor treatment while seeking professional advice.