Heartbeat: Going green – Birmingham pushes ahead with new transport plans

October 21, 2020

Smoke, congestion, pollution and poverty are four things that have become synonymous with inner-city living with the steady increase in the number of private vehicles on the roads and the rush of people wanting to get around. However, things are set to change in Birmingham shortly.

With City Hospital bordering the Clean Air Zone our Trust has joined in with the efforts to improve air quality in the region. To find out more, Heartbeat caught up with Sustainability Officer, Fran Silcocks. She said: “We’re committed to ensuring that we limit our impact on the local environment.

We employ almost 7,000 people at our Trust, with a significant proportion of these people commuting to and from work by car. We must explore other options and support staff to help improve air quality.”

We will be installing circa 100 electric vehicle charging sockets across City, Sandwell and Midland Met in the near future to support staff, patients, visitors, and the public.

Providing this infrastructure will support those that want to drive low emission vehicles, making it easy for people to charge their vehicles on our sites. We also offer a car purchase scheme via Tusker with low electric and hybrid vehicles on offer.

For those that prefer two wheels instead of four, across our Trust we now have facilities to support colleagues to cycle to work. We have secure cycle parking across our main sites, cycle lanes at the main entrances, a cycle to work scheme offering discounted bikes and equipment, free electric bikes to loan, and many more.

We are also working with the local public transport bus providers to support colleagues. Through National Express, we offer discounted bus passes as well as a new flexible bus pass for those that are working remotely.