Whipcar.com, the neighbour to neighbour car rental company, has expanded its service to enable local authorities and small-to-medium size businesses to make more efficient use of their existing cars.

Research from WhipCar shows private car owners typically made over a £1,000 last year - or 14% of the annual cost of running a car -  simply by renting their cars out to people who live near them just once a month.

Building on the success of its consumer offer, WhipCar Fleet is aimed at public and private sector organisations wanting to take advantage of the initiative.

The majority of small businesses in the UK (95%) say they have seen a rise in business costs over the past year, according to research from the Forum of Private Business (FPB), with transport costs being the most commonly cited increase (88%).

Vinay Gupta, co-founder of WhipCar.com, said: “Over the last two years we’ve been approached by local councils who want to create an ‘instant car club’ either with their municipal fleets or by providing incentives to residents who join WhipCar.

“The introduction of WhipCar Fleet enables local councils to further develop the peer-to-peer car rental concept as a cost effective and administratively simple way to help their residents share assets and make better use of community resources and precious road space.”

WhipCar Fleet says it can provide the perfect platform for businesses with an existing fleet of cars to combat the rising costs of maintaining cars by renting their under-utilised cars to pre-approved drivers within their organisations.

Since its launch in April 2010, WhipCar has expanded nationwide and now has a presence in hundreds of towns across the country and 90% of Londoners can now find WhipCars to hire less than 10 minutes from their front door.