Staffordshire Moorlands District Council
Key contact: Philip Haddock, Special Projects Co-ordinator
Fleet profile: 43 private use scheme cars, 1 pool car, 10 light commercial vehicles, 213 grey fleet cars and 30 HGVs
Business: Local authority covering 575 square kilometres
Location: Leek

Staffordshire Moorlands District Council’s commitment to reducing its impact on climate change has resulted in a dramatic fall in mileage and vehicle emissions.

The challenge
The Council signed the Nottingham Declaration* in 2003, which led to the development of a comprehensive green travel plan with the aim of limiting the impact of their vehicle usage on the environment. They then engaged the Energy Saving Trust to carry out a Green Fleet Review which highlighted a number of environmentally unfriendly facts:
• Mileage reimbursement rates incentivised driving more miles (and could also be perceived as part of the employees’ salary package)
• Employees who were required to use a car during work hours had no choice but to drive to and from work even if they preferred to use public transport
• Line managers had difficulty managing travel because no support was provided on choosing between the range of sustainable travel options
• There was no formal policy for overall staff car usage, despite its direct impact on staff remuneration

The solution
The recommendations from the Green Fleet Review provided guidance on how to act upon all of these. Additionally, the implementation of a travel hierarchy encouraged greater use of alternatives such as video and tele conferencing.

Incentives were provided to reduce the use of older vehicles and a low emission pool car was introduced.

As a result of working with the Energy Saving Trust, the Council developed a greater understanding of all issues relating to business travel. When fleet data is measured accurately fleets are easier to manage and establishing benchmark data enabled the Council to identify how to make considerable financial savings.

The Council has developed its own electronic mileage claim system which records data on every lease car and grey fleet vehicle (private cars used for business travel).

This includes the age of the vehicle, fuel type, CO2 emissions, miles travelled and the mileage claimed. Staff also log any journeys made by public transport.

The system automatically calculates the CO2 emissions of every business journey which
allows more accurate reporting against national performance indicator NI 185.

Philip Haddock, the authority’s Special Projects Co-ordinator comments: “The system provides much more accurate data on the use of individual vehicles as well as information on staff travel patterns and is important in identifying where further improvements to our existing travel patterns can be made.”

The results
Consequently, the Council were able to put in place a framework of policies and initiatives that is achieving real reductions in the carbon intensity of their vehicles, which Mr Haddock claims “is improving our business efficiency and financial efficiency as well as our environmental efficiency.”

“The Green Fleet Review gave the Council an accurate view of the environmental impacts
of its fleet. We have now adopted specific targets and are firmly focused on further reducing our carbon footprint, cutting mileage and costs. The financial savings made will be ploughed back into improving council services.” Philip Haddock, Special Projects Co-ordinator, Staffordshire Morelands.

District Council
These initiatives have resulted in some dramatic carbon savings:
• The new leasing scheme encouraged staff to move from private cars to clean, safe, lower carbon emission vehicles and has increased the number of leased vehicles by 95 per cent (up from 22 to 43). Remarkably, their carbon footprint is only 7 per cent higher
• Despite the number of grey fleet vehicles growing by 37 per cent, their mileage has increased by only 9 per cent and carbon emissions by 2 per cent, so the bigger fleet has not had a proportionate impact on the overall carbon footprint as the average mileage and emissions per driver have reduced dramatically
• The van fleet has decreased in size by 29 per cent (from 14 to 10 vehicles) but emissions have dropped by 58 per cent – largely due to a 46 per cent drop in mileage and a 21 per cent improvement in fuel efficiency
• The HGV fleet has grown from 15 to 30 vehicles as a result of the recycling collection service being brought back in-house. This doubling in fleet size has been matched by a 109 per cent increase in mileage, but carbon emissions have increased by only 27 per cent as a result of improved fuel efficiency. This is due to using newer vehicles which are serviced more regularly, and the driver training programme, which has had a significant impact.

Future strategies and targets
Following on from these achievements, the Council’s next objective is to encourage more employees to stop using their own cars, which typically have higher emissions, and to drive lower emission models, either through further uptake of leased cars or improved utilisation of the pool car. Annual low carbon incentive payments of £125 are awarded if drivers select a leased vehicle with CO2 emissions below 140 g/km and a further £125 if they select one with a CO2 figure below 120 g/km.

New vans are being introduced that are equipped with stop-start technology to reduce emissions and refuse collection routes will also be benchmarked.

The introduction of the Green Fleet Review initiatives has enabled the authority to set a series of carbon reduction targets, namely:
• Reducing grey fleet mileage by 5 per cent per year until 2011/12
• All grey fleet vehicles to meet Euro3 emissions standards by the end of 2009/10
• Cutting HGV fleet fuel use to reduce 10 per cent per year until 2011/12
• Cutting mileage by 50,000 miles a year through the use of video conferencing by 2010/11

Source: Enery Saving Trust