The vehicles – including two Nissan LEAFs – have been provided by Enterprise Rent-A-Car after the firm’s analysis of the data from council business trips undertaken in employees’ own cars showed that 81% of those journeys were shorter than 50 miles and 71% of trips lasted for fewer than four hours.

The vehicles are being run as a virtual pool car fleet to cover the organisation’s shorter business trips. Enterprise has also provided employees with access to its online technology so they could hire vehicles on a daily basis for longer journeys.

All AVDC employees are now required to use the new rental and CarShare vehicles rather than their own cars for work journeys.

Councillor Sir Beville Stanier, AVDC’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Health, said: ‘It is important that the council leads from the front to demonstrate what can be done to reduce our impact on the environment.

‘We are committed to finding more environmentally sustainable ways of doing business and daily business travel is part of that. Our new car pool scheme will help cut down emissions of carbon dioxide and reduce costs of staff travel. We also now have better control over employee journeys and can monitor where vehicles are.’