LONDON (8 July 2014) - York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has adopted a combination of daily rental and car sharing as part of a new travel strategy designed to increase safety and lower costs. Its intention is to move away from mileage reimbursement and it has partnered with Enterprise Rent-A-Car to provide employees with a safer and more efficient business travel programme.

The Trust’s York-based staff previously used their own cars to travel for business and reclaimed mileage expenses –the ‘grey fleet’. This was costly and meant the organisation had little or no control over the roadworthiness of the vehicles being used.

Employees will now use one of ten Enterprise CarShare vehicles based at York Hospitalfor short business trips in and around the area.

Richard Vincent, assistant director of estates & facilities at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, comments: “The Enterprise CarShare system will make it easier to comply with our duty of care responsibilities, particularly in terms of vehicle roadworthiness. The system was simple to introduce as it not only incorporates vehicle provision but also the administration for registering users and booking the cars.

“Using Enterprise is also far more cost-effective than the grey fleet and means we’re no longer paying out thousands of pounds in mileage reimbursement. All staff who would otherwise use their own vehicle or public transport to travel on Trust business are eligible to register for the Enterprise pool cars and are encouraged to use them.”

The pilot programme is initially targeting selected employees based at York Hospital and the plan is toexpand car sharing and rental within the hospital and to other hospitals run by the Trust.

Adrian Bewley, director of business rental at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, adds: “Community-based organisations are starting to realise the high incremental costs and risks associated with discretionary travel, especially if employees are allowed to use their own vehicles. The grey fleet is costly, awkward to manage and results in people driving cars over which their employer has no control. York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has taken a major step towards controlling those costs and risks by taking a long, hard look at how it provides business travel.”

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust provides a comprehensive range of acute hospital and specialist healthcare services for approximately 530,000 people living in and around York, North Yorkshire, North East Yorkshire and Ryedale - an area covering 3,400 square miles.It manages ten hospital sites, 1,127 beds (including day case beds) and has a workforce of over 8,000 staff working across the hospitals and in the community.

St. Louis-based Enterprise Holdings, the largest car rental service provider in the world, operates the Enterprise Rent-A-Car brand through its regional subsidiaries. Enterprise started in the UK in 1994 and now has more than 3,500 employees. With more than 370 locations across the UK over 90 per cent of the UK population lives within 10 miles of an Enterprise branch.

For more information about Enterprise, visit www.enterprise.co.uk. For more information about Enterprise’s environmental stewardship and long-term commitment to the sustainability of its business, visit www.drivingfutures.co.uk.

[This news release and other Enterprise Rent-A-Car announcements are available at the Enterprise Holdings press room.]