Alternatives to the car
Walking
Some of our offices are relatively close together, so walking is a possibility. If you walk, there are no parking problems and you'll burn off some calories too!
Cycling
Cycling in Derbyshire has information about cycling for work, our salary sacrifice scheme to purchase a bike and equipment and ways to plan your route. If you use your own bike for work journeys you can claim 20p per mile, although mileage claims cannot be made for bikes purchased through the cycle to work scheme.
Public transport
You can find information about public transport, like tickets, discounts and travel planning.
Electric pool cars
Our fleet of electric pool cars is available for all employees and councillors to use for business journeys to support our carbon reduction pledges.
Hire cars
If you need to make a journey over 110 miles (round trip) and an electric pool car is not available, our travel policy asks you to book a hire car through the vehicle hire form rather than use your own vehicle (or consider alternatives such as public transport).
The only exception is if you use an adapted vehicle, or if reasonable effort has been made to keep the mileage under 110 miles and an electric pool car, car hire and other methods of transport have been considered and are not feasible.
Own car
If there are no alternatives to using your own vehicle you must make sure that journeys are pre-approved by your manager and that you take the most direct route.
The travel policy explains the need to have a valid driving licence and motor insurance policy covering business use. Your manager must also check that your vehicle is roadworthy with a current MOT (if required).
Mileage claims should be submitted monthly, to help with budget monitoring. You must give full details of every journey (not just a monthly summary) for audit, authorisation and monitoring purposes.
Smarter travel for managers
As an employer we have a duty of care to employees when we ask them to travel for council business. Managers are key to ensuring we carry out our duty of care to employees and that resources are spent wisely.
You must make yourself and your employees aware of our occupational road risk policy and guidelines, which apply whether employees are driving council vehicles or their own.
Managers must check employees' driving licence, motor insurance, MOT (if required) and vehicle details on an annual basis or more frequently if the employee has penalty points as determined in the management of occupational road risk policy and transport code of practice.
All fleet services forms are available on EDRM.
Managers can use the SAC reporting tool (through the Fiori manager’s dashboard) to run a travel report from SAP. This helps to analyse the travel and subsistence claims of employees.
Managers should advise colleagues to use our electric pool vehicles for business journeys, rather than their own vehicle, wherever possible.