DM HALL CONTINUES DRIVE TO GO GREEN
DM Hall, one of Scotland’s largest independent firms of Chartered Surveyors, has made over two thirds of its substantial car fleet all electric (EV) or hybrid (PHEV).
Of its 130-strong car fleet, used principally to convey its surveyors to inspect, assess and value residential and commercial properties across Scotland, the firm boasts 28 PHEVs and 4 EVs, with a further 45 PHEVs and 7 EVs currently on order.
And while costs on both types of vehicle continue to escalate and waiting times can be as much as 12 months, the drive towards a wholly green vehicle fleet is unstoppable.
DM Hall Managing Partner, John McHugh, said: “We are doing all we can as a firm to mark our 125th anniversary and beyond with a decisive move to becoming a greener business.
It is in the nature of our profession that we must be mobile to perform our surveying duties, so the attraction of helping to create a cleaner environment while at the same time reducing our overheads by going green makes an excellent business case for doing right by doing well.”
He added: “A further appeal of running a green car fleet arises from the tax breaks which both colleagues and the firm will enjoy, including lower road tax, more generous benefit in kind rules and greater annual capital allowances.”
To mark their anniversary, and as a symbolic investment in the future, earlier in 2022 the firm also undertook the planting of 125 trees in Cashel Forest, a 3,000-acre estate by Loch Lomond which is being transformed with native Scottish species into the “Forest for a Thousand Years”.
Surveying graduate, Edina Matyasi (pictured above), was delighted when her employer, offered to replace her diesel company car with a new all-electric MG 5 vehicle.
With an eighty-mile round trip journey every Monday to Friday from her home in Tranent, East Lothian to the DM Hall office in Galashiels, Edina was paying around £300 a month to get to work. Now with her new car she can save around two thirds of that monthly sum, even though she has to charge her car daily.
She said: “I’m lucky to have a public electric charging point about five minutes’ walk away from our office in Galashiels. It’s a minor hassle though because although my car is said to have a range of 240 miles when it’s fully charged.
But the monthly cash saving makes the hassle perfectly OK because another advantage is that the benefit in kind tax charge levied on company cars is a whole lot less than the amount I was paying in extra tax when I had my old diesel car.
So almost every way you look at it, having an electric vehicle as a company car is a big plus.”
