ASK THE EXPERTS
BY BOB PAPWORTH
CAR SHARING
What benefits can car-sharing club membership bring to corporate mobility programmes?
“I AM A YOUNG EXECUTIVE. NO CUFFS THAN MINE ARE CLEANER; I have a Slimline briefcase, and I use the firm’s Cortina.” That may have been true when John Betjeman penned his poem Executive, but today’s thrusting young go-getter is more likely to have eschewed the car in favour of a cash alternative.
Once the ultimate arriviste status symbol, the company car has been going out of fashion for years, as increasing numbers of employees opt to use their own cars for business purposes in return for a fat cheque. All of which, from a corporate perspective, throws up a welter of issues – not least because employers have little oversight of the roadworthiness of the vehicle being used in their name.
The unscrupulous find it relatively easy to inflate their mileage expense claims, they are office-bound while their cars are being serviced, there are constant squabbles over parking spaces and so on, ad infinitum.
The short answer to the question of what car-sharing brings to the table, at least according to Beate Kubitz, communications manager at car club organisation Carplus, is “control”. Having initially targeted the occasional-user market, many
car-sharing companies are now focusing on the corporate market, fulfilling duty-of-care requirements and providing a welter of important management information. They are also helping to reduce emissions and, crucially, they are producing dramatic cost savings.
The figures were astounding. The 1,284 THE BUYERS CROYDON BOROUGH AND CITY OF YORK COUNCILS
WHEN CROYDON BOROUGH COUNCIL EM- BARKED ON A TWO-YEAR PROGRAMME to review its car-use policy, it first investi- gated its ‘grey fleet’ – the use by council employees of their own vehicles for council business.
40 BBT MAY/JUNE 2016
employees – around one-third of the entire staff – who were considered to be essential car users were notching up 1.1 million miles a year, at a cost of £1.3 million, and emitting 345 tonnes of CO2 in the process. Staff issues over insufficient parking spaces were also taking up management time. In the space of two years, working in partnership with Avis-owned Zipcar, the council managed to reduce the number of ‘essential’ car users to 611, achieve a 48 per cent reduction – to 642,000 miles – in the distance covered, and cut its CO2 emis- sions to 207 tonnes. Crucially, the cost to council taxpayers was slashed by 64 per cent to £472,000. Using Zipcar’s ‘hybrid’ solution, 23 ve- hicles are reserved for council employees’ exclusive use during working hours, but are available to all Zipcar members after 6pm during the week and throughout the weekends.
City of York Council operates a similar scheme with Enterprise-owned City Car Club, reducing its grey fleet by 24 per cent and saving nearly £100,000 in the first year of operation. As part of a broader project, the council asked staff members to plan their journeys ahead of time, to consider whether the car was the best – rather than easiest – option, and to consider how long they actually needed the car for. The result has been a significant
increase in employees’ use of public transport, and in the number of those who now opt to walk or cycle to work. James Williams, City of York’s staff
travel project manager, said: “Vehicles are available to suit a wide range of travel demands from our staff. From social workers who need to carry around child car-seats, to engineers who are required to carry large items of kit, there is always something to cater for everyone’s needs.”
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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