Car club

What is a car club?

A car club is a membership scheme that offers people use of a car on a pay-as-you-go basis.

The scheme saves you the additional costs and inconvenience of owning or using your own car, and means that you have easy access to a car for those occasional journeys when you need one.

Car club cars are parked in dedicated bays all over the borough, so that car club members are close enough to walk to one easily. The Council has teamed up with three car club operators - Zipcar (formerly Streetcar), City Car Club and Greenwheels - to add many more cars to the on-street network in 2011-12.

Membership of a car club isn't suitable for all people, but if you don't use a car very often it can be an attractive alternative to car ownership, or to having a second car in the household. Car club members tend to drive only when they really need to - much less than car owners - so having a club in the borough can help cut car use overall.

Calculate what  you could save using a car club.

More car club bays in 2011-12

From 2011 the Council plans to increase the number of car club bays fivefold, bringing the total number of on-street cars to 150. You can find more information in the January 2011 Car Club committee report and the committee report appendix.

When new car club bays are introduced some residents might be concerned about "losing" an on-street parking space to the car club, but research shows that every car provided in a car club leads to up to 20 cars fewer being parked in the local area. Every single car club space is really a parking space that is used by several residents rather than just one.

Find out more

To find out if there's a car near you visit www.carclubs.org.uk.