Climate Change and Air Quality Progress Report 2023 to 2024

During November 2024 the Council’s provider of our Cycle to Work scheme ran a prize draw competition to win a bike of up to £4,999 to encourage take up of the scheme. There is also a dedicated page on our staff intranet which explains how the scheme works and the benefits of participating.

The Council offers a salary sacrifice car leasing scheme provided by Tuskers. The scheme offers benefits for low emissions vehicles, including a reduced “Benefit in Kind” payment (BiK) rate of 2% on electric vehicles (until 2025) versus up to 37% being levied on the most polluting cars. These rates are set by the government.

There are currently 94 live contracts with a further one on order, of these 51 are for an EV and 17 for a ULEV. Tusker also offset all tailpipe emissions and any from EV charging, since the launch of the scheme 735.2 tonnes of CO2 have been offset.

Since the adoption of our Climate Change & Air Quality Strategy in 2021 we have:

• installed a new fleet charging point at Black Park Country Park for a new EV that is now in use by our Country Parks Team
• installed fleet EVCI at our Family Time Services sites in High Wycombe and Aylesbury
• our Highways Team have taken delivery of 6 new EVs
• one new EV each for the Crematoria & Cemeteries Service and the South Waste & Street Scene Service.
• in total we have installed 8 electric vehicle charge points across our estate for charging our EV fleet

The Country Parks Team welcomed a new electric van to the team in January 2024. Visitor Services Ranger, Ben Bateman, said “By switching to an electric vehicle to open and close our Country Parks, our diesel vehicle usage has been reduced by over 2,000 miles. Importantly, this mileage reduction is during peak traffic times when our diesel vehicles would produce higher emissions.”

The “Work Smart” practices, reported upon in last year’s Progress Report, continue - allowing Council operatives to work from home, where operationally feasible, approximately 60% of the time. This has been enabled by IT systems and hardware that allow for effective remote working, such as Microsoft Teams®. Managers decide on how best to balance the home/office working patterns of teams to ensure that required performance standards can be met while social and environmental benefits can still be realised.