Using car clubs for business travel: guidance for public bodies

Staff business travel, referring to any travel undertaken by employees for business purposes, is a significant source of transport emissions for many public bodies, in particular the NHS. The grey fleet, meaning employees’ own vehicles used for business purposes, typically makes up the majority of business travel. For example, the 62% of NHS business travel consists of grey fleet care provision.

The COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 had a significant impact on reducing staff business travel, as working from home became more commonplace and travel was minimised. Whilst this had a positive impact on reducing emissions, staff business travel, and particularly the grey fleet mileage, has been increasing again in recent years. 

Implementing a travel hierarchy is an important part of tackling business travel (see Staff Scope 3 Emissions guidance). It is important to first reduce travel, then move to other modes such as active and public transport. There will however be remaining car travel, and this note focuses on car sharing as a means of tackling grey fleet emissions specifically. 

One way of reducing grey fleet mileage is to move employees from their personal vehicle into the organisation’s own pool cars. Pool cars are owned and run by an organisation, forming part of the organisation’s fleet of vehicles. These are available for all eligible employees to book and use, for business purposes. Using pool cars means the organisation has much more control over what vehicles employees are using for business purposes, including their emissions rating, safety rating, fuel type, and maintenance standard. 

Pool cars need to be easy to book and access, clean, and comfortable – employees need to want to drive them. Reaching a high level of usage is the most important factor in achieving a cost-effective pool fleet. 

An alternative to owning and running a pool fleet, which can be a significant task and cost, is to use a car sharing provider (or car club). In this case, the car sharing provider will provide the vehicles, booking, management system, maintenance and cleaning. It is also possible to use just the booking system and/or management from some suppliers but using your own vehicles. It will be important to work out the cost and most appropriate course of action, depending on the realistic usage expected of the vehicles.

Car sharing is where a vehicle is available for anyone eligible to use, and car clubs are providers of shared vehicles. A public car club is available for anyone to join and use, though they are limited to where operators have set up a car club. There are a handful of public car clubs in Wales, mostly serving cities – though the TrydaNi network is expanding across rural communities.  

Many car club providers have a business offering, which can be adapted to suit specific use cases. Some (for example Enterprise, Day’s Rental and Co Wheels) can provide the vehicles as well as all the booking and management. Others (such as Hiyacar) can provide all booking and management to add to your own vehicles. In either case, the types of vehicles required can be specified, including making the pool fleet battery electric vehicle (BEV) only. 

Car clubs can have a positive impact on local communities, especially those underserved with public and shared transport means. Using a car sharing platform can also enable the sharing of vehicles with other organisations or the public. Most operators will enable ring fencing of times at which only the organisation can use the vehicles. For example, during business hours the vehicles could only be used by the organisation, and outside of business hours they could be usable by the public. This type of usage can feed into the development of rural “mobility hubs” with cars, ebikes and bicycles available to use and with links to public transport.

Whether the vehicles are owned or leased, the digital platform to allow employees to use the vehicles can have a significant impact on the level of usage of the vehicles. The most important aspect of having a cost-effective pool fleet is a high level of usage, so the vehicles need to be easy to book and access. Using the digital platform of an external car club operator may provide this ease of booking in a cost-effective way, thus improving the use of the pool fleet. 

Specifications will vary by operator, but in general car sharing platforms offer some or all the following:

• booking platform which is easy to use and generally via an app
• driver administration/management for checking driving record and licences
• fleet administration/management for cleaning and safety checking
• keyless vehicle access which enables keyless entry to vehicles 
• telematics for managing vehicle movements
• vehicle maintenance including MOTs 
• insurance and/or breakdown cover
• 24/7 support
• out of hours public use options to enable businesses to recuperate funds through sharing the vehicles with the public during non-work hours (including suitable insurance cover)

The grey fleet is one of the biggest areas of emissions in the public sector, and it is a difficult area to tackle. One way is to get employees out of their own cars and into shared vehicles, which organisations can have more control over, and specify that they be zero-emission. 

These shared vehicles can be business-owned pool fleet vehicles, with everything managed in house, they can be business-owned vehicles with an external booking system, or they can be vehicles managed and supplied by an external car club provider. The best solution for your organisation will depend on cost, ease of use, level of usage, and amount of emissions reduced. This may also change over time, so it is worth scheduling a regular (for example annual) evaluation. 

Starting from no pool vehicle offering, it may be advantageous to start by bringing in an external provider, but if this is well used, after some time it may be more cost effective to purchase your own pool fleet. Or a pool fleet could be created from existing vehicles with low utilisation, and trialling a booking platform may be the best option. 

Replacing all current combustion engine vehicles with zero-emission vehicles will not alone be the solution to eliminating transport emissions. Sharing transport and vehicles is part of the solution. Employers can have a role to play in encouraging employees to gain experience and confidence in shared vehicles, thus making public car clubs more popular and reducing the total number of vehicles on our roads. 

The WLGA has detailed guidance to support councils in encouraging staff to travel more sustainably. These resources include an action plan and relevant case studies on related subjects including ridesharing, workplace EV charging, staff incentives and sustainable travel friendly facilities.