NHS trust take a lead on vehicle electrification

Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust has been able to accelerate its fleet electrification after Mer installed charge points at 13 of its sites.

Mer worked on the project with NTW Solutions Ltd, which is the subsidiary responsible for support services to the Trust. NTW Solutions provides the Trust with estates and facilities management, car leasing, finance, workforce and procurement services.

Lee Cant, Commercial Director of NTW Solutions:

“Working with Mer to procure these chargers has been an enabler for us to move forward with our decarbonisation strategy. We benchmark ourselves against other trusts in the region and we know that we are out in front in terms of fleet electrification thanks in part to this project.”

“In total 40 percent of the lease cars are now fully electric or plug-in hybrids, while about a quarter of the service fleet is the same. Some of the service vehicles are larger and they need full payloads for operations like laundry, so they won’t be electrified yet, we’ll concentrate for now on the lighter vans.”

NTW Solutions runs a fleet of 1,400 lease cars for Trust employees as well as around 90 service vehicles ranging from pool cars to vans and trucks.

Mer won a competitive tender to deliver the charge points after meeting all the key criteria. One of the main priorities for the Trust was the ability to set different tariffs – free charging for fleet vehicles, a preferential rate for staff, and a higher rate for visitors.

Scott Duncan, associate consultant at Mer:

“We are proud to be helping the Trust with the decarbonisation of its fleet. This was a complex but rewarding project to install chargers across multiple locations. The Trust is making full use of the smart charger technology to set different tariffs for various use cases and utilise Mer’s proprietary back-office software for data analytics.”