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Travel

Part B of the Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate (Framework), published in July 2002, focusses on reducing emissions and congestion from road travel associated with departmental fleets and civil service commuters by March 2006. Over 11,000 vehicles travel some 200 million miles every year on Government business. Additionally, around 40,000 civil servants commute to work by car every day. In July 2003, the Prime Minister launched the UK's Powering Future Vehicles strategy, to ensure that the UK should lead the global shift to clean, low-carbon vehicles and fuels.

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Carbon dioxide emissions (Target B1)

Since the 1998 Transport White Paper, Departments have been introducing travel plans to help cut down on car use. Last year Departments had 920 travel plans covering over 1,300 sites. This year, the requirement for travel plans has been succeeded by the Framework.

During 2002-03 the Government Estate produced more than 80 thousand tonnes of carbon emissions from travel related sources. This figure is the baseline against which future progress will be monitored and reported.

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Alternatively fuelled vehicles (Target B2)

Last year, 4 per cent of all vehicles on the Estate were run on alternative fuel or were LPG/Petrol hybrids. This year, although the total fleet size has remained the same, 9 per cent of all vehicles (excluding MoD) are now alternatively fuelled. Government is therefore well on its way to meeting the target of having 10 per cent of all fleet cars alternatively fuelled by 2006. 15 Government Departments own or lease alternatively fuelled vehicles, of which DWP accounts for two-thirds of total of 967.

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Single occupancy car commuting [Target B3]

During 2002-03, three-quarters of car commuting journeys were single occupancy trips (ie driver only). This figure may provide part of the baseline against which future progress will be monitored and reported. It should be noted that the single-occupancy figure may refer to people arriving, having dropped people off on the way, depending on the type of collection.

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Data collection

In order to measure their progress towards Targets B1-B3, all Departments are required to have systems in place to collect appropriate data. Given the way the targets are framed, Departments have some flexibility in what data to collect.

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Car use data collection

Here are two examples of how Departments collected data for the base year 2002-03 regarding commuter trips:

ONS: The Department has 6 sites, covered by the Framework, mostly with secure, guarded perimeters with gatehouses. Security or facilities management staff carried out a count of commuter trips in a representative week towards the end of the financial year and the results were included in the annual environmental performance questionnaire for the site. Aggregation of these returns at departmental level established the 2002-03 baseline. ONS encourages car sharing using a database on which staff can ask for or offer a lift or taxi share. This is advertised in the electronic daily staff news bulletin twice a year.

Defra: The Department uses a staff survey to collect commuter information prior to creating a travel plan for sites with over 50 staff. At 7 November 2002, travel plans covered 69 per cent of the Department's staff. The information collected for these staff was then extrapolated to arrive at the figures given in this SDiG Report.

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Departmental Data

For more detail on the how specific Departments within the UK Government are achieveing these targets, please access our Search Departmental Data section.

Report 2003

Updated: 07 March 2005