Isra-Mart srl : Saving travel costs and carbon in the National Health Service

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As one of the country’s biggest employers, the NHS with its 1.3 million staff and 500 different organisations, is facing one of the biggest challenges in terms of sustainability, cutting carbon and managing travel.

With an increased emphasis on localism emanating from the Government, it is likely that each organisation will be finding its own innovative solutions to the current cost versus productivity challenges.

“1000 good ideas could bloom.” At least that is the hope of David Pencheon, head of the NHS sustainability development unit, who says: “The NHS is a formation of organisations. All organisations will have their own travel policy.”

There is a figure bandied around that one in 20 vehicles on the roads is something to do with the NHS. But when you think about all the midwives, doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmaceutical deliveries, ambulances and health researchers across the country, you can see why there is a lot of NHS traffic out there.

In an interview with PST, Pencheon is pretty clear that those traffic levels have got to be cut back, where it is practical. The car mileage allowance (currently 37-58 pence per mile) has been an incentive to use your car, and those with bigger cars get more, he says, while there are few incentives to cycle between meetings, even when it would be fairly easy to do so. Car parking is a very contentious issue for staff and patients, and something that may well come under the sustainability microscope pretty soon. In fact the NHS is about to readjust its mileage allowances. New levels of reimbursement will take effect in July 2013. But NHS organisations are being urged to raise the cycle mileage rate to 20p a mile before that, and raise the car passenger rate to 10p, as well as incentivise increased use of public transport.

The Government has agreed to allow trusts to decide their own policies regarding the amount that they charge for parking. This means that staff car parking charges could go up. Trusts may decide car parking spaces could also be reserved for car shares and car clubs, according to the recent NHS Business Travel report.

Some NHS organisations are already being innovative. For instance, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Trust in Bristol has introduced a pool of 20 electric bicycles. Pencheon points out that Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge has worked with the local authority to become a major public transport hub.

But the impetus to drive down meetings and travel is only just showing effect for many. “In the NHS you are so focused on the day job (of healthcare) that nothing else gets a look in. The number of teleconferences is improving a lot, but people still want to do face-to-face meetings,” says Pencheon.

One policy being discussed is that only an introductory meeting between any group of people should be conducted in person and that after that tele/video/web conferencing should be used. But currently the average Primary Care Trust, the local organisations planning healthcare, accumulates up to 2 million business miles per annum. NHS managers attend an average of 17 face-to-face meetings a month and it is believed that 32% of these could have been conducted via tele/videoconference.

It estimated that if teleconferencing replaced 500 meetings per PCT over the year the savings would be

• Travel: £41,450-£53,950
• Salary: £27,450-£53,950
• CO2: 28,000kg-35,000kg

As NHS deputy chief executive David Flory told staff in a newsletter this month, there is a great incentive to reform business travel and minimise energy consumption, so savings “can be redirected to healthcare delivery”.

No doubt, we would all appreciate that.