North Yorkshire County Council has signed a four-year solus supply salary sacrifice car agreement with Tusker, which will initially be available to around 30,000 public sector employees as part of its flexible benefits package.

The new ‘Green Car Lease Scheme’ is available as part of the County Council’s ‘Everybody Benefits’ flexible benefits package which is open to all staff.

It covers vehicles with carbon emissions of less than 120g/km – a choice of almost 600 different models – in line with the council’s environmental policy.

The reach of the agreement may extend beyond North Yorkshire, however, as under its terms Tusker has also been awarded a Pan Government Collaborative Framework Agreement for its salary sacrifice cars scheme, SalarySacrifice4Cars (SS4C).

As a result, it becomes available for use by all UK contracting public sector authorities, including Government departments, non-departmental public bodies, the NHS, local authorities, police authorities and emergency services, who may be looking to implement such a scheme for their employees.

North Yorkshire County Council benefits and reward consultant John Robinson, who engineered the agreement, expects a take-up of up to 500 vehicles within North Yorkshire in the first year of the contract, having already had initial enquiries from 250 council employees before the scheme goes live on April 1, but says the scope could extend much further than that.