Making Car Sharing and Car Clubs Work - Case ... - The Civil Service

MAKING CAR SHARING AND CAR CLUBS WORKCASE STUDY SUMMARIES22 CITY WHEELS (SWANSEA)General Background22.1 City Wheels is an initiative of Swansea Housing Association (SHA), a not-for-profit housingassociation with around 2,800 homes in the Swansea and Neath Port Talbot areas. Tenantsinclude a wide variety of people with different housing needs, from young single people tofamilies and the retired. City Wheels is an entirely closed scheme within SHA, covering bothits tenants and its staff: if it had opened City Wheels up to the general public this would havebroken SHA’s charitable objectives. However, significantly, the car club also covers SHAstaff during working hours and in practice acts as a pool car system, though tenant membersof the scheme can also book to use cars during working hours. The idea of City Wheels wasfirst conceived in 2000 and the scheme was launched in February 2001.22.2 City Wheels evolved principally out of the City Living lettings initiative - a marketing strategydesigned to attract people to live in the city centre. Whilst including SHA’s traditional tenantbase, City Living was specifically aimed at working people - a group who, although neverspecifically excluded, tended to assume that they would not be eligible for homes and didnot apply. City Living was SHAs response to the aspirations of the local authority (City andCounty of Swansea) of developing and revitalising the City Centre. It has grown from aprovincial town to become Wales’ second city. Swansea is unusual as a city in that untilrecently it had practically no residential accommodation in the city centre, there had neverbeen the more elaborate town houses and most of the old town back-to-back terraces hadbeen cleared in the mid to late 1800s. The centre of Swansea was virtually flattened inbombing raids of the Second World War leading to a hotch-potch of low-rise 50s and 60sinfill developments on cleared bomb-sites. There was a huge potential for opening up spaceabove shops, café bars and offices to build residential accommodation. Continued citycentre housing development is seen as a key factor in making the city centre safer, and inencouraging a lively retail and leisure and entertainment culture there.22.3 Another factor influencing the development of City Wheels was that traditionally, parking forcity centre flats was one space per 4 people. It was increasingly proving unsustainable orimpossible to offer this level of parking for new inner-city housing developments, makingthese developments less attractive to potential tenants. In addition, car parking in Swanseais now becoming expensive, compared to previous prices which were relatively low. Parkingcharges for tenants of SHA city centre developments are currently £9 per week (there wasformerly no charge).22.4 A third factor was the need to reduce costs of staff car use by moving largely from a systemof business use of staff’s private cars to a pool car system. SHA was facing escalating costsfrom staff mileage (the standard Inland Revenue mileage rate), essential car user'sallowance (£900+ per user per annum) and the financing of replacement and maintenanceof company cars.22.5 Finally, the launch of City Wheels coincided with the move of SHA's offices to a new locationin the refurbished Old Post Office in Wind Street in the heart of the city regeneration area,and the need to provide or offer alternatives for staff members who would thereby lose theirFinal V1.1, Dec. 2004 - 129 -