We monitor and manage the mileage driven by building and environmental service vehicles. See table.
| Period | Fuel type | Total used (litres) |
|---|---|---|
| April 2004 – March 2005 | Diesel | 236,941 |
| LPG | 104,266 | |
| April 2005 – March 2006 | Diesel | 226,979 |
| LPG | 79,742 | |
| April 2006 – February 2007 | Diesel | 198,208 |
| LPG | 59,111 |
The year on year reduction is due to careful planning of journey routes and the introduction of alternate weekly collection rounds to accommodate recycling activities. Using DEFRA conversion coefficients this equates to 664 tonnes of CO2 in 2006-2007 compared with 715 tonnes in 2005-2006, a reduction of 7%. A small number of vehicles have been fitted with vehicle telemetry to pilot the impact upon journey routing. Drivers have undergone a course of ‘safer and fuel efficient driving’ to improve fuel efficiency.
We have bought three sets of videoconferencing kit to go in each of the main buildings. This equipment will be situated in a quiet room in each building to enable staff to videoconference appropriate meetings. The council is increasing the network bandwidth in the summer of 2007 to accommodate a greater volume of information and this will further enhance our videoconferencing abilities.
The ‘fit for the future’ programme is progressing and we now have ‘hot desk’ facilities in our main buildings to support expansion of home working.
We are sharing best practice with Staffordshire Moorlands regarding monitoring systems for business mileage. We are upgrading our human resource systems and this process will include an update of our approach to business mileage monitoring.
We will make greater use of the calendar facility to coordinate lifts to meetings. Staff and Elected Members drove a total of 351,520 miles during 2006-2007. This figure excludes mileage from High Peak Community Housing.