London Doctors Surgery Goes Green By Using Car Club For House Visits, UK

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 31 Aug 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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A doctors surgery in central London are using a pay-as-you-go car club instead of their private cars in order to significantly reduce their carbon footprint.

Doctors at the James Wigg Practice in Camden Town, no longer use their private cars for home visits and have done a deal with leading UK car club, City Car Club.

All 15 doctors at the practice have signed up as members, and now commute to work on public transport, and instead use a City Car parked in their surgery car park which can be booked by the hour for less than £5. This has reduced their joint carbon emissions by 133 Tonnes of CO2 a year, the equivalent of 34 flights to Australia.

Practice Manager Tracey Chapman said: "We contacted City Car Club two years ago and have been using the service ever since and it's perfect for a small medical practice.
"It is important to me that our practise operates in the greenest way possible.
"But also it's practical, and our doctors can do their house visits and other staff can do essential errands with the cars."
And she added: "It could not be simpler, I can usually book the car literally as I need to leave the office, taking no more than a minute to go online and sort out the booking.
And on return, we don't have to worry about parking spaces as there is always a bay in which to park the car. We used to waste hours every week just looking for a parking space."
"Also at the weekends the local community has access to the car so it's useful to our neighbours as well."

Practice staff were given a special deal on membership fees because they are a multiple business user with more than five people who joined. As a result membership was reduced from £75 to £25-a-year per person. After that the club takes care of all the maintenance, insurance, cleaning, depreciation, and parking permits. They also pay for the first 50 miles fuel every day.

Doctors at the James Wigg practice have chosen to block book the car for the working week because they need to know it is always available. But most businesses have regular bookings in advance or book on spec on the internet at http://www.citycarclub.co.uk by phone on 0845 330 1234 or directly from the cars. In all cases, members gain access with their smart enabled, personal membership card (totally keyless access). Their PIN is entered onto the onboard computer and then they just drive away. Journeys made are itemised on a monthly statement.

City Car Club is already well established in the UK with over 300 cars and 6,000 members in London, Brighton, Bristol, Bath, Norwich, Edinburgh and Birmingham.

And as well as being green, being a car club member is considerably cheaper than running a fleet car because City Car Club pay all the insurance, maintenance, parking and cleaning costs, and they also pay for 50 miles worth of fuel per day.
According to RAC figures a motorist driving 4,000 miles a year in a Ford Mondeo would pay around £2,400 in insurance, petrol, maintenance, depreciation, road tax and parking. A City Car doing the same mileage will cost just £1,200.
So it saves the planet, and saves you a packet.

City Car Club