Essex County Council achieve success for their driving for better business campaign

Implementation of a comprehensive occupational road risk management strategy coupled with a targeted drive to reduce vehicle use has resulted in Essex County Council becoming the latest organisation to achieve ‘business champion’ status from the Government-backed ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign.

The campaign is delivered by RoadSafe and the authority is the 42nd organisation to become a ‘business champion’, which are used to promote the financial, legal and moral reasons for organisations across the public and private sectors to invest in at-work driving safety.

Chelmsford-headquartered Essex County Council runs a fleet of 855 vehicles including cars (580 employees run a vehicle under the authority’s lease car scheme), car-derived vans, light commercial vehicles, HGVs, purpose-built vehicles such as mobile libraries, passenger-carrying vehicles, buses, coaches and plant and equipment.

The council also has approximately 7,000 employees who drive their own cars on business - the so-called ‘grey fleet’ - although the authority encourages employees to use public transport and other options such as teleconferencing where more practical and cost effective

Caroline Scurr, director of the ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign, said: “Local authorities have a crucial role to play in reducing work-related road crashes. Not only are they major employers in their own right and therefore must have robust safe driving strategies in place, but they can also influence local public and private sector organisations to follow their lead.

“Essex County Council has demonstrated leadership on both counts. Recruitment to the ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign means that the policies and procedures it has implemented are ones that we would recommend that all public and private sector businesses follow to ensure they have an auditable safe-driving strategy in place in the event of a vehicle being involved in a road crash.”
 

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