The company points to its own experience alongside research from Enterprise Rent-A-Car that says 45% of small firms use their vehicles for fewer than two hours per week.

Neville Briggs, managing director at CFC, said: “This is something that we have been monitoring for a while. At the start of the recession, the most interesting trend to emerge was that many companies started to look closely at car use for almost the first time – they minimised fuel and maintenance costs by cutting out unnecessary journeys

“However, in few fleets has this line of thinking taken what is probably be the logical next step – of asking whether a little used company car is really needed, whether it could be used differently, or whether there are other methods of company car provision that could be explored? All of these are really questions of utilisation."

Briggs said that the reason these questions were not being asked were probably that many fleets were still in the process of making the transition from a human resources dominated fleet culture to one that was more about operational efficiency.

He said: “In a sense, the trend towards contract extensions has allowed fleets to sidestep making new long term fleet decisions based mainly on cost effectiveness. It has meant that they do not have to tackle long term issues such as whether a driver really needs a company car. Now may be the time to ask these questions as contract extensions start to end and decisions on renewing cars are being made.”

Briggs said this was not just a question of offering employees who rarely used their company car some form of ‘cash or car’ offer but also looking closely at other possible methods of provision that are emerging such as car clubs and short term leasing alongside established flexible car provision methods such as daily rental.

He explained: “There are many kinds of company car provision now available and some of the newer ones, such as car clubs and short term leasing, could be suitable for drivers who only need a vehicle for a handful of hours every week or month.

“This would mean a kind of fleet management starts to emerge that is quite different from the model of recent years – one in which current car need is the overriding factor in management decisions rather than employee satisfaction and retention.”

Briggs said that CFC had been working closely with some fleets to look at the issue of utilisation and how it could be driven up with the help of fleet software.

He said: “In order to make decisions on utilisation, companies need to gather as much information about their fleet as possible. They need to know how cars are being used, for what purpose and when. What they do with that information is very much a question of how much appetite exists for cost reduction when balanced against HR needs.

“Certainly, there could be a case for finding alternative salary packages and car provision arrangements for those employees who rarely use their company vehicle unless there is a very convincing HR argument for keeping them.

“In the long term, increasing utilisation by removing these kind of company cars from the fleet could be one of the key method of cost reduction available to employers.”