Since the pilot scheme began, membership has consistently increased each year by about 100 staff and 365 members of the public, and now stands at 400 and 1,800 respectively.

Staff can join as private members for a reduced rate and the vehicles are available to council partners for council business at rates significantly below those for private hire vehicles.

Before the scheme started, Zipcar ran an advertising campaign aimed at the residents and users in the borough, so that when it went live there were immediate bookings.

The council and Zipcar also held a number of briefings and open events for staff, along with a poster campaign, intranet updates and personalised emails. Getting key people involved at the beginning has been an important part of the scheme’s success.

“It’s word of mouth,” says Ruth Morley, service performance manager at Croydon Council, who was heavily involved in the pilot scheme.

“A lot of staff have joined through their colleagues telling them ‘it’s great’.” taking the pain out of administration Having a system that makes it easy to place or cancel a booking is also important, with staff able to book through the council’s intranet or a smartphone app.

“All the administration is outsourced,” says Morley. “Zipcar runs the bookings, which means our involvement in that side is quite minimal.”

The council has also drawn up user agreements to make sure everyone that joins the scheme knows how it works and what they are responsible for. If a vehicle is damaged, it is replaced within hours.

The council had a spate of thefts at the start of the trial and Riggall says it’s important to make sure vehicles are in areas that are well lit and covered by cameras.

All of the vehicles are tracked and the council receives a monthly report of vehicle usage. Utilisation is between 80-95%.

“We monitor people’s usage very carefully because you could abuse the system by booking a vehicle out all day every day and never use it,” says Morley.

“If someone makes a booking, but doesn’t use the car, we contact them about it. “But on the whole, staff are really good with bookings and they enjoy driving the cars, so they do it properly.”

The pilot scheme allowed the council to make sure it was using the right number of vehicles. “We started the trial with 30-35 cars,” says Morley. “We ran those for a few months, then analysed the data, then reduced the number of vehicles a bit and then upped them a bit, and moved some vehicles around.

“For example, you might have a car that is used 100% of the time in one location and another one somewhere else that is used 20% of the time, so if you move your 20% vehicle over to where your 100% vehicle is, suddenly you’ve got two vehicles being used 80% of the time.”

The pilot scheme also highlighted the amount of miles staff were doing. “We did lots of analysis and found that although there are some people that drive hundreds of miles – normally to go out to child protection issues – there are a lot of people that just drive around the borough,”
says Morley.

“We had 40 miles per day included in the price, but that turned out to be excessive – we were only using about 15 miles – so we cut that out to reduce the price. Now we pay a few pence per mile that we drive the vehicle.”

Since winning the tender last year, Zipcar has continued to allow the council to adjust the scheme when needed.

For example, when council workers were on annual leave at Christmas, the council reduced the number of hours it had the vehicles for.

“Zipcar was happy to do that as it was still getting revenue because the public were using our vehicles during the daytime to do their Christmas shopping,” says Morley.

Zipcar has also been quick to assist the council in getting help to flood-affected areas in the borough.

"We’re running a 24-hour command centre at the moment and we wanted to have officers out in those areas, checking pumps were working, visiting care homes and checking residents,” says Riggall.

“Zipcar gave us a car to facilitate that within two hours of us putting a call in to them, which was brilliant.

“It’s about having a partnership and a system that is flexible enough so that, as your business needs change, you can grow your fleet or move your fleet around the borough accordingly.”