“Our emissions will be in the 90s in the not too distant future. We did some work with the Energy Saving Trust four years ago and have just signed up for another review.

"We want to stay ahead of the game and that’s easier to do when all you have are job-need vehicles,” Sothcott says.

Reducing CO2 emissions is great for corporate social responsibility, especially for a charity, but ultimately, everything comes back to cost.

Discounts are sought direct from the manufacturer and passed on to Leasedrive to quote.

All the cars are on four-year contract purchase deals due to the VAT benefits from Marie Curie’s charitable status while the vans are on contract hire, written up to five years.

The car contracts vary from four years/40,000 miles to four years/100,000 miles.

Marie Curie has an agreement with Leasedrive whereby it can re-contract on mileage up to twice per car.

“We look at mileage every quarter. Around 25-30% of our cars will have a re-contract during their lifetime because people are doing less than forecast,” Sothcott says.

“If we’re out by just 2,000 or 3,000 miles we won’t bother; our mileage is pooled and we’ll take the credit at the end of the contract.”

All contracts are written without maintenance. Instead the organisation pays on use, exploiting Leasedrive’s network of franchised dealer and – increasingly – independent repairers.

“At the end of each year we look at our maintenance spend and gauge that against what it would’ve cost us under contract. There has been a saving every year,” Sothcott says.

“At one stage we were putting 80-90% of our maintenance through franchised dealers.

"Now it’s around 45% and we are trying to reduce that all the time because of the savings – £60 per hour labour charges instead of £90, for example.

"We have a one-stop number that people ring at Leasedrive and they handle the process.”

Does the use of non-franchised dealers create issues with the manufacturer? “No, we have no problems. We get the same warranty and level of support,” Sothcott says.

Qualifying mileage for a company car is 8,000 miles; roughly 3,000 employees do less than this and use their own vehicles for business.

However, they are restricted to a maximum journey of 100 miles. Exceed this and they must book a hire car.

“We did the calculation of daily hire versus fuel and it worked out that the cut-off point was 96 miles,” says Sothcott.

“We paid out £700,000 in mileage claims in the last 12 months – some staff were claiming 400 miles a day at AMAP rates. We expect to see that reduce by a significant amount.”

Grey fleet drivers must provide the usual details – licence, MOT and insurance – with the annual checks carried out by local managers.

“It’s impossible for one person to look after a grey fleet with so many drivers,” Sothcott adds. “All the managers are very aware of why they need to carry out the checks.”