Caerphilly County Borough Council has been recognised for its staff travel planning.
The local authority was awarded the Welsh Government-backed All Wales Travel Plan Award at Gold level.
The scheme was introduced to recognise best practice and excellence in staff travel.
Cllr Rob Gough, Cabinet member for public protection, engineering and transport accepted the award on behalf of the council recently.
He said: “To achieve this Gold award for our travel planning is a testament to the hard work of so many – it is especially pleasing that while in the guidance for the awards it stated that new applicants, which we were, could only apply for the bronze award, we were in fact awarded gold. This truly reflects the quality of work being undertaken across the organisation to promote and implement sustainable transport projects”.
To achieve the Gold Level award, the council undertook a staff travel survey, introduced a staff car share scheme, provided showers, lockers, cycle shelters and pool bikes for staff to use during work and leisure time.
This is good news for the Caerphilly CBC,.
What surprises me is the fact that the council declared sometime ago that it had so many hired, owned and leased vehicles, that it had extreem difficulty in garaging and parking them at evenings and week-ends,the solution was that they would allow staff to take these vehicles home with them.
This presents a problem, the main one being the fact that if an employee has`use` of a `company` vehicle even when it only allows that employee to use it to go back and forth to work there is a huge income tax liability on the individual employee for that privilege, only, of course, if this is declared to the Revenue and Customs in each individual case, if it is not declared and the Inland Revenue complience Department discovered it, there would be a huge, increasing, financial liability on the Caerphilly Council for allowing this system to operate. I wonder if the Revenue and Customs and the assessors of this award are aware of this costly, unnecessary, process operated by Caerphilly CBC in respect to its management of its vehicle fleets.