BRITISH Gas's natural gas vehicles sales and engineering staff are to start driving cars running on compressed natural gas. The flagship deal was revealed just months after plans were scrapped to convert the huge British Gas Services fleet to gas power.

At the time British Gas Services said the lack of a refuelling infrastructure had led to the postponement of the project. Fleet manager Paul Holmes said: 'We were a depot-based operation, but now our 5,500 engineers start from home every morning, so it's not practical to use gas. We cannot have drivers going around looking for gas to refuel when they should be working.'

However, David Crowther, from British Gas NGV says the problem will disappear as CNG becomes widely used and pumps appear on forecourts rather than only at depots. He said the NGV fleet deal, which sees staff driving Volvo V70 bi-fuel cars, emphasises the benefits of CNG. Eventually all 21 staff will drive the CNG-powered cars and to date six vehicles have been delivered with the remainder delivered as existing vehicles are replaced.