ONE of Britain’s best known driving schools is going upmarket – and buying Audis for its driving instructors.

Learner drivers booking lessons with Bill Plant Ltd will soon be taking to the road in style in new Audi A3 and Audi Q5 models.

The Yorkshire headquartered business will be replacing 150 cars in its fleet with the new Audi models after securing a £2 million asset finance deal with Santander Corporate and Commercial.

Owner and founder Bill Plant said: “We are delighted to have secured the finance to refresh the fleet.

“As one of only two major driving schools offering fully qualified instructors we are very focused towards offering a top quality service and providing high-end, new cars with all the latest safety features is a very important part of that.”

Bill Plant is typical of a small business that’s managed to blossom into a much larger SME operation.

Bill started his driving school business in 1999, and started hiring out his specially modified car to other instructors when he wasn’t using it.

He soon realised the potential of this, reinvested the profits, and bought a fleet of vehicles to hire out to more instructors.

In 2002 the business was turned into a franchise operation and now there are 700 Bill Plant driving schools spread across England, Scotland and Wales.