In the wake of austerity-era shrinking budgets, many public sector organisations have been looking  at outsourcing fleet management. Some have done away with their company cars entirely, in favour of staff using their own for business journeys. 

But Oxford City Council prefers an in-house approach, and has swapped grey fleet use for a centralised pool fleet (see panel, page 29). Its motor transport team, part of Oxford Direct Services (the council’s business unit for its frontline services, including waste, parks and building services), buys its vehicles – currently 33 cars, 116 vans, 72 trucks/tippers (up to 3.5 tonnes), 9 bikes, 350 plant/trailers and 35 ‘miscellaneous’ road-registered vehicles (eg sweepers) – and maintains them at its workshop at its Marsh Road depot in Cowley. Internal departments at the council are charged a rental on the vehicle with maintenance. 

Motor transport disposes of the council’s smaller vehicles at the Marsh Road depot, via an auction run by Milton Keynes Motor Stadium Auctions – something the council has done since 1996. Larger vehicles are sent to an external auction.

The only aspect of risk management that is outsourced is driving licence checks (done by Intelligent Data Systems), with the council employing a driver-trainer to assess and coach drivers.

Fuel is bunkered at two of the council’s sites – enough to meet its fuelling needs – and the council has a number of electric vehicle (EV) charging points (the council has an eclectic mix of eight Nissan Leafs, two Citroën C-Zeros, a Goupil electric tipper, six John Deere E-Gators and six electric bikes). 

“Some of the people we liaise with – other councils – get everything outsourced pretty much,” says Owain Pearce, fleet technical officer (pictured centre) at the council. 

“We decided to keep everything in-house; we can keep a better control of it. We’re happy with the residual value risk because we’ve got a thorough maintenance record; we’ve got an excellent service history.”
But if the council isn’t outsourcing its fleet functions, the question arises as to how it is meeting budget cut limitations.

“We’ve had to come up with initiatives and new ways of thinking to meet those reductions in budgets,” says Ian Bourton, fleet and business services manager (pictured left), who has been in charge of motor transport at the council since mid-2013. 

Bourton started his career at the council on the workshop floor around 30 years ago, progressing to workshop manager before moving onto waste, and then income generation and revenue increases for the council through frontline services. 

Since heading up motor transport, Bourton has overhauled the fleet maintenance schedules to avoid over/under-servicing and has restructured the workshop. All mechanics are irtec-accredited technicians and the council has started to offer maintenance and repair services to other organisations.

“We’ve had a drive on income generation so we do a lot of private work for colleges, universities and schools,” Bourton says. 

“We’ve also introduced an authorised testing facility lane for HGVs so we not only lower our own emissions and it’s more convenient for us, but local business can also use it. Instead of them going 22 to 26 miles one way they can come here, so it reduces emissions locally.”

Pearce adds: “We have a few companies where we do anything from the small vans to the large trucks. We maintain those and we’re slowly growing that business. We have a lot of private customers that we do MOTs for.”

As part of the efficiency drive, the council upgraded its out-dated fleet management software (which was so old it used function buttons rather than mouse controls) to Jaama in April last year. 

“We can get more out of the new system; it’s a lot better for reporting, monitoring and maintenance,” Pearce says. 

The fleet team has also focused on improving driver behaviour through the use of telematics and driver training. 

This resulted in a 22% reduction in  the fleet’s accident rate last year (compared to 2014) and a 7.3% improvement in fuel economy. 

To improve pedestrian and cycle safety the council has fitted cameras to its refuse collection vehicles so that drivers can see in their blindspot, and all new employees undergo an assessment and licence check before they can drive a council vehicle. 

Driving licence checks are based on risk. Drivers that have six or more points have their licence checked every three months. Otherwise, the check is annual. 
HGV drivers undergo in-house CPC training and an annual assessment. 

Bourton says that there can be a requirement for further training “because people get bad habits”. Drivers are reassessed if they have an accident and telematics data is also used to determine whether a driver needs training. “Telematics has been on heavy vehicles since the year dot, but we’d never used it in anger to do any sort of innovative stuff,” Bourton says. 

“We started with the heavy fleet, the refuse vehicles, looking at driving down cost because fuel is quite expensive for those types of vehicles. We’ve gone from about 3.5mpg to about 5mpg on trucks.

“We’ve done a lot around promoting the drivers: we do a driver of the month league table with the telematics results and we’re looking at doing driver of the year as well. 

“Then we started to push it out to the smaller vehicles – 3.5 tonne vehicles – and do telematics and driver behaviours on those. We’re doing a pilot with car-derived vans but there is less CO2 and fuel to be saved on smaller vehicles.”

Currently, around 85 vans and all of the HGVs have telematics. The council is using two systems: CMS for HGVs and Lightfoot for smaller vehicles. 

Truck manufacturers have been “much happier to divulge algorithms”, according to Bourton and, as a result, the CMS system is “a lot more in-depth”. 

Since April last year the fleet team has been publishing a list of the top five drivers on the staff noticeboard each month. 

“We don’t show the bottom five but we do talk to them,” Bourton says. “Our driver-trainer sits down with them, takes them out and we like to see them come up the table.”

Drivers that are doing well are praised and Bourton believes that staff have bought into it as “driving standards have improved quite considerably”. 

The council is a member of the How’s My Driving? scheme and it is “extremely rare” to receive a complaint from the public. 

So how did the council get drivers to buy in to telematics?

“You have to get their involvement at the start, rather than just putting something in the cab to monitor what they’re doing,” Bourton says. “It’s sharing the improvements, sharing the outcomes and putting that into monetary terms.”

The benefit for the council, aside from reducing fuel and accident costs, is that drivers are safer. 

“Some of the critical things for a fleet manager are based around how we safely operate the vehicle and, if you’ve got driver behaviours, the spin-off from that is that they’re operating them in a safer way,” Bourton says. 

“If they’re not speeding, if they’re not sharp cornering and harsh braking, they’re a lot safer on the road and that’s represented in the accident reduction rate.”

EV pool cars help to save thousands of pounds

Oxford City Council is saving thousands of pounds a year by using electric pool cars rather than allowing employees to use private cars for business journeys. 

The Energy Saving Trust analysed the business case for the council in 2013 as part of its Plugged in Fleets initiative. 

It compared grey fleet costs at 10,000 miles per annum over three-to-six years against the wholelife costs of the Nissan Leaf. The cost savings from using the Leaf were £720 over four years and £2,645 over six years. 

A staff workplace travel survey supported the case for EVs. 

It found that 82% of journeys were within the Oxford ring road – a range suitable for EVs. 

The council created a centralised pool car booking system and introduced a policy that employees could only claim grey fleet mileage in exceptional circumstances. 

The changes were made as part of a workplace travel plan which also promoted cycling and walking. 

“There was no big uproar about removing the grey fleet and getting people to use pool cars because there were clear alternatives,” says Jennifer Carr, sustainable energy officer at  the council. 

“Anyone who was cynical about driving an EV soon changed their mind when they got behind the wheel.”

The council held launch events at its three sites, giving employees a chance to drive an EV. 

Anyone new to EVs also receives on-road training from the council’s driving trainers. 

The three Nissan Leaf pool vehicles (five other Leafs are departmental  vehicles) are typically used within the city centre and can be charged at the three sites or at public charging points throughout the city. 

The council is not new to EVs. It ran its first in the late 1990s and took part in the Mini E trial in 2010. 

A number of departments also had Citroën C-Zeros prior to the introduction of the central pool car fleet. 

Operating EVs has environmental benefits for the council. 

“Air quality is a massive driver for  the city council,” Carr says. “We have  a target to reduce CO2 emissions by  5% every year and the fleet is a large part of that.”

Transport accounts for 20% of the council’s total CO2 emissions – second  to buildings (73%). 

Overall, low emission vehicles  make up 16% of the council’s fleet, including bikes, with two Citroën C-Zeros, 23 hybrid vans, one hybrid  car and six electric bikes. 

The electric bikes were introduced three years ago, following a free trial with a local bike shop. 

“Staff doing 10 different meetings within Oxford in a day will use those because of the convenience of not having to park a car or wait for a bus,” Carr says. 

“Pedal bikes would fulfil that but having an electric bike means you can get there quicker and you’re not exhausted when you get there.”