York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has significantly expanded its car club programme for business trips following major savings from the initial pilot.

Deploying its new programme of car club and daily rental vehicles has enabled York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to cut costs and enhance sustainability and health and safety management

The hourly vehicle rental scheme was first introduced in 2014 in partnership with Enterprise Car Club vehicles alongside daily rentals; a programme that has led to an annual saving of £24k. The new service expands from 10 to 37 cars and will operate at 10 locations, including Scarborough, Bridlington and Malton Hospitals as well as other healthcare facilities in the region.

As well as bringing much lower transport costs, the new system of using car club vehicles for short trips and daily rental vehicles for journeys of more than 50 miles has enabled the Trust to manage health and safety more effectively compared to its previous reliance on grey fleet vehicles.

In addition, the vehicles’ presence on-site has reduced the need for Trust employees to drive to work and enabled them to take public transport instead, cutting traffic and commuter mileage.

Brian Golding, director of estates and facilities at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our car club programme at York Hospital has been a real success and showed that we could move away from the expense and administrative hassles of mileage reimbursement at our other sites as well.

“Enterprise enables us to keep our employees mobile as and when they need it, while helping to reduce costs, meet our sustainability objectives and ensure our people drive safe, modern cars. We’re finding that our employees are driving fewer miles, which is also beneficial.

“Using the data the Enterprise team provides on business journeys, we’ve also been able to create a comprehensive travel policy that promotes car sharing and further reduces mileage by ensuring employees only take trips that are absolutely necessary.”