The scheme, provided by Tusker, allows staff to take up a car through a salary sacrifice arrangement, enabling them to save on tax and national insurance.
John Robinson, benefits and reward consultant at North Yorkshire County Council, says: “We introduced it as a green car scheme, partly due to the fact that we knew this would help to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) [emissions], but as an employee benefit, not a fleet situation. In other words, it was entirely up to the individual whether they took a lease car to use for work, or simply took a lease car to use for their own personal use.”
The council also agreed to pay employees 40p a mile for the first 10,000 miles of business use of a car, and continues to do so. About 50% of scheme members use cars for work.
“We introduced a scheme whereby we still paid them 40p a mile, so even though it is still classed by [HM Revenue and Customs] as a company car, we are still paying individuals 40p a mile,” says Robinson.
“It encourages those people that do use a car for work to actually use it as an option. We’ve managed to reduce CO2 emissions on the scheme from people trading in their old cars to the green cars. They have dropped their CO2 emissions by 50g/km on average.”
