Scottish Water is using Tusker’s salary sacrifice scheme to help employees gain affordable access to a new EV, advancing the Government’s net zero target.

Scottish Water Plc has teamed up with Tusker to help its employees shrink their carbon footprint, while also putting it on track for its own net zero goals

Scotland became one of the first nations to announce a climate emergency back in 2019, sparking a plan to hit net zero by 2045.

Scottish Water is playing its part, joining forces with Tusker to help its employees shrink their carbon footprint, while also putting it on track to meet its own net zero goals.

The utility supplier was already taking concerted action to tackle employee emissions by ensuring management were driving EVs.

The next step was to offer a similar option to all its employees and the new Tusker scheme means staff can drive fully insured and maintained electric cars for a fixed monthly cost that’s deducted from their salary, saving both their wallets and the environment. Further savings for EV drivers are to be found with lower running costs than a petrol or diesel car.

Since the scheme’s launch in August, almost 1,000 Scottish Water employees have already signed up to look at cars on the salary sacrifice scheme. A wide range of the latest electric models are available through Tusker, from compact city cars to family SUVs, all underpinned by an easy-to-use online portal, on-hand support and tools such as an online charging point locator and a journey cost calculator.

Holly McPhee from Scottish Water’s Fleet team said: “We found that a number of companies in the UK were offering their employees salary sacrifice car schemes and with the ethos of our movement to net zero, we were keen to work with our reward partner, Reward Gateway, and Tusker, to offer an affordable route to EV motoring to as many of our employees as possible.”

While motorists are enthusiastic about a switch to EVs, research by Tusker has found that the purchase price continues to be a major hurdle. However, its salary sacrifice scheme opens the door to affordable EV motoring while helping to enable net zero targets.

Alison Argall, business development director at Tusker, commented: “We’re seeing more and more businesses with net zero targets working with us to move their employees into zero-emission vehicles – the car scheme can help with removing large amounts of emissions from the car parks of organisations, rather than just those in company cars, so it’s an easy win.”