My experience of providing company cars is that PCP is actually cheaper monthly but you couldn't claim any of the VAT back (that may have changed now) so we always leased cars, usually 3x36 so 3 months down and a three year lease.
Maintenance is not automatically included with a lease, in fact most leases don't include maintenance.
I have never done a personal lease, but I can understand why people do it, all you're paying for is the depreciation and you get on a cycle of having a brand new car every three years, so maintenance is minimal and costs are fixed.
Personally I prefer to run slightly older cars and own them outright, but it's probably not a particularly economical way of doing it.
Leasing is something we will be looking at for the next car, I bought my own car on HP and I`m not sure I would do that again neither. Albeit I buy my own cars and keep them a long time.