NHS Scotland - climate emergency and sustainability: annual report 2021 to 2022

5. Travel and Transport

5.1 Decarbonising our fleet

Road transport accounts for over 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and causes poor air quality and noise pollution. The Scottish Government aims to transform Scotland’s transport system from one based on fossil fuels to one reliant on renewable energy and active travel.

NHS Scotland aims to:

• reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from its fleet vehicles and business travel as part of achieving net-zero
• maximise its contribution to reducing emissions from staff commuting and patient and visitor travel to net-zero by 2045
• contribute to a 20% reduction by 2030 from 2019 levels in the total distance travelled by car in Scotland.

Fleet vehicles are vehicles owned or leased and operated by Health Boards.

Business travel refers to travel by staff for work purposes (not including commuting).

NHS Scotland’s total reported emissions from its fleet and business travel are set out in Table 5 below. Data is not available from all Health Boards for these categories or for all of the last three years. Further, more detailed data is set out in the Annex.

The increase in reported total emissions is due to better reporting rather than to underlying changes in actual travel emissions. It is anticipated that all Health Boards will report their emissions for fleet business travel for 2022/23 to allow a better understanding of the effectiveness of actions to reduce these emissions.

Decarbonising the vehicle fleet is a priority for NHS Scotland to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. NHS Scotland is aiming to:

• remove fossil fuel cars and light commercial vehicles from its fleet by 2025
• remove all fossil fuel vehicles from the fleet by 2032 or earlier where possible.

A summary of fleet composition by Health Board as of 31 October 2022 is provided in the Annex.

A number of Health Boards have already made excellent progress in replacing petrol and diesel cars and light commercial vehicles. Over 50% of NHS Tayside’s fleet cars are already electric, 100% of NHS Orkney vans are electric and NHS Lothian has 160 electric vehicles. However, there are variations in progress by Health Boards.

Overall, for the 23 out of 24 Health Boards which provided data for 31 October 2022:

• 19% of NHS cars are electric
• 16% of NHS light commercial vehicles are electric
• 1% of heavy vehicles do not use fossil fuels

5.2 Electric Vehicle Charging

To support the transformation of our fleet, and as outlined in our strategy, last year Health Boards continued to expand their infrastructure for electric vehicle charging for corporate fleet, patients, staff and visitor use.

As of April 2021, there were 397 electric vehicle charge points at 123 sites across 15 Health Boards.

As of April 2022, the number of charge points had increased to 538 at 197 sites across 15 Health Boards.

The 15 Health Boards are:

• Ayrshire and Arran
• Borders
• Dumfries and Galloway
• Fife
• Forth Valley
• Golden Jubilee
• Grampian
• Greater Glasgow and Clyde
• Highland
• Lothian
• National Services Scotland
• Orkney
• Shetland
• State Hospital
• Tayside

5.3 Enabling Active Travel

Walking, wheeling and cycling are the healthiest ways to travel, with the lowest environmental impact. The NHS is committed to providing viable sustainable travel options and supporting the shift to active travel by making it easier to walk, wheel, cycle and take public transport to NHS Scotland services for staff, patients and visitors.

5.4 Partnership Working

In 2022, the Sustrans Scotland NHS Workplace Engagement Programme continued with the aim of increasing active and sustainable travel by NHS Scotland staff and creating a culture where this is normalised. The following Health Boards are currently involved in this programme:

• NHS Dumfries and Galloway
• NHS Shetland
• NHS Grampian
• NHS Ayrshire and Arran

As part of this programme, Sustrans works with each Health Board to develop bespoke Active Travel Action Plans for the agreed NHS Scotland sites ensuring tailored, site-specific actions. The activities focus on:

• raising awareness of travel options, routes, information and support for employees interested in changing travel behaviour;
• empowering and enabling employees to consider alternative travel options for their everyday journeys;
• assisting employees to take action to experience travelling actively and/or sustainably;
• establishing strategic opportunities to embed in the core business of NHS Scotland and build legacy.

Key impacts from both past and present Health Boards involved in this Programme are outlined below.

Table 6: Examples of positive impacts in a number of Health Boards

NHS Dumfries and Galloway

Single occupancy car use as a main mode of travel to work has decreased from 71% at baseline (2017) to 59% in 2021.

NHS Shetland

Single occupancy car use as a main mode of travel to work has decreased from 77% at baseline to 51% (2020-2021).

Between September 2019 and April 2022, staff have cycled 4,824 miles (7,764km) using the eBike network.

Increase walking to work from 12% at baseline to 22% (2020-2021).

NHS Highland

Single occupancy car use as a main mode of travel to work has decreased from 64% at baseline (2016) to 53% in 2021.

NHS Lanarkshire

Cycling as a main mode of travel to work has increased from 2% in 2020 to 6% in 2021.

5.5 Bike use in Health Boards

As outlined in our strategy, NHS Scotland will enable staff, patients and visitors to make sustainable and active travel choices, for example cycling, where they can and work to make such travel options accessible to everyone.

Several Health Boards have already been working to enable active travel to and from their sites by making bikes available for use by staff and patients. A summary of bike use in some territorial Health Boards as of December 2022 is provided in the Annex.

As outlined in the Annex, Health Boards have made bikes available for personal loan by healthcare staff for commutes and leisure purposes; pool bikes for business use; and cargo bikes also for business use. In two Health Boards bikes are available for use by patients awaiting some types of surgery; for both weight management and mental health purposes. This work is still at an early stage and further progress is expected in future years in line with the strategy.

Bikes in NHS Lothian

NHS Lothian are trialling a fleet of e-bikes for business travel purposes as part of the Board’s sustainability programme.

The 24 bikes being piloted comprise both leased and purchased bikes and will allow approximately 150 staff members to access this healthier and more environmentally friendly mode of transport. The bikes are based across a range of services. Some of the teams using the e-bikes include a Rapid Response Team, a Health Visitors team and a Community Mental Health team.

The e-bikes have a tracker to help understand patterns of use and help enable the pilot to be evaluated. There is also an app for users to support e-bike booking and report faults with the bikes.

NHS Lothian has shared relevant documentation from the pilot with other Health Boards and public bodies with the intention of accelerating the integration of e-bikes into business travel across the public sector.