A sustainable mobility report for businesses has just been published, outlining five crucial areas of focus for sustainability professionals – from electric vehicles (EVs) and greener fleets, to smarter business travel. The report explains how transport is responsible for a quarter of global energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and these emissions are increasing at a faster rate than any other industry and how vital it is for businesses across all sectors curb this trend. Whilst the Government will be delighted regarding the recommendations of electric vehicles it is less clear if they understand about smarter business travel. The business I work for is a small business that is constantly struggling to persuade certain public sector agencies that their desire for environmental credibility (such as the adoption ISO14001, the environmental policy) is at odds with their demand for a small numbers of large or even medium sized suppliers to deal with across a very large area. Clearly the need to manage and monitor businesses that are in receipt of public funds does point in the direction of a small numbers of agencies being commissioned. On the other hand if a larger number of businesses are involved in public contracts then whilst the capacity to carry out detailed assessment of all of them may be less, providing the businesses that are picked out randomly are acting in a responsible manner and the rest are delivering on a consistent basis with their sector then this may just as effective, or possibly even more so. The procurement framework our company is about to apply to join is based on an area from the South Coast to Birmingham excluding London but with 127 clients each capable of spending 100’s of thousands of pounds each Summer. We are only interested in working in Sussex, Surrey and Kent for day to day work and we know that some of the local clients are keen to offer work to local companies. However the framework which is designed to reduce the impact of every piece of business needing to go through a massive set of tender arrangements currently consists of 9 companies of which one is in Kent and all of the rest are West or North of the M25. So there are a huge number of the clients that have to wait several hours and for many miles to be covered before a supplier can reach them and begin work on their site. This is very bad for the environment and it is bad for the people working for the businesses who spend hours each day travelling, often forcing them to stay away from their families for weeks at a time!