NHS Lanarkshire is the third-largest health board in Scotland, serving a population of 655,000 across rural and urban communities in Lanarkshire. The board employs around 12,000 staff working in communities, health centres, clinics, and offices, with three district general hospitals – University Hospital Hairmyres, University Hospital Monklands and University Hospital Wishaw.
In a bid to better understand the local mobility landscape and the unique commuting challenges facing their workforce, NHS Lanarkshire utilised Mobilityways’ Scoping Smart Mobility and Travel Survey tools. These insights revealed the latent postential of sustainable commuting with the majority of their team traveling to work by single-occupancy vehicles. The data was also used to calculate the boards ACEL (Average Commuter Emissions Level) to effectively benchmark, track and change their Scope 3 commuter emissions.
Keeping our communities healthy is why the NHS exists and to do this we need a world where we protect our environment and reflect on how we use natural resources. Thinking about how this can be achieved should be threaded through everything we do.
Caroline Lamb, Chief Executive NHS Scotland
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NHS Lanarkshire sought a means to implement and promote sustainable commuting amongst their 12,000 strong workforce to support ambitious environmental goals, whilst not jeopardising their critical operations. They needed:
To understand the commuting challenges faced by their team and gain insight into how to overcome them.
The ability to make data-based decisions in regard to the allocation of sustainability budgets.
To have full visibility of commuter emissions across all sites.
Discover ‘quick wins’ to reduce emissions which will add up to big carbon savings over time.
Benchmark and track emissions reduction progress in line with net zero targets.
Measure the effectiveness of sustainable commuting initiatives.
The vast majority of employees - 95.8% - had a viable sustainable option available to them.
Increased cycling infrastructure is a good investment, with 37% of staff living within a viable cycling distance.
Only 7.4% of staff had a viable rail option despite all 3 hospitals being within walking distance of a train station.
ACEL and Scoping has been really useful in putting a metric to emissions from staff commuting. It's insight we didn't have before and it's allowed us to track and manage that figure over time. This allows us to strategically target sites with a greater need for sustainable travel facilitates.
Michael Simpson, Head of Sustainability Management, NHS Lanarkshire
