He was the founder of City Car Club in 1999 and left the company towards the end of 2007. He has continued to advise the company on the management of its EU Civitas funded project and on local authority partnership issues. Other recent work has included strategic advice to Mendes Ltd, the operators of the new car club in Cork, Republic of Ireland.

SUMMARY
Chas is an innovator who has played a key role in taking leading edge environmental businesses to a national marketplace. He founded City Car Club (originally Smart Moves Limited) which is now one of the major forces in UK car clubs. In the nineties he led Leeds-based community enterprise SWAP (Save Waste And Prosper Ltd, environmental consultants) to play a successful consultancy role on recycling and producer responsibility for some nationally-known businesses like ASDA, B&Q and ICI Paints.

As an Executive Director at City Car Club until 2007, he is familiar with the requirements of working in a commercial business environment, dealing with decision makers, reporting to stakeholders and managing staff.

He has worked closely with local authorities in creating a partnership framework for developing a successful car club. His work has also included negotiating with developers and housing associations to integrate car clubs in the design of new schemes and secure planning approval.

He also has significant experience of facilitating cross-sector collaboration, bringing people from different sectors together nationally to work on issues of mutual concern. He was a founder of a business/local authority forum – the Household Hazardous Waste Forum and of Carplus – a specialist charity that promotes car clubs.

KEY SKILLS
Management - strategic and operational
Managing a successful city wide programme of car club development
Having successfully tendered to take over the flagship car club scheme in Edinburgh in 2001, after the first operator pulled out, he was responsible for City Car Club’s expansion of the scheme to over 60 cars and for liaison and annual reporting to City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) on the key indicators of the scheme’s development.

Strategy development and project implementation
Sustainable transport policies and projects
He has extensive experience of partnership working with local authorities, in the development and implementation of their local transport planning, including Bristol City Council and City of Edinburgh Council. As an Associate at RATC Ltd, Chas has expanded his work on sustainable transport to include other aspects of travel planning.

Car clubs – conferences, research and development
He organized an RATC conference with Transform Scotland in March 09 to commemorate 10 years of commercial car clubs in Britain, and is working on a review of the strategic needs of car clubs.
He acted as an adviser to Irish company Mendes Ltd, operators of the new car club in Cork (launched September 08), who have a service agreement with German operator Cambio Mobility Services. He has contributed to documentation of good practice in car club parking design and signing.

Experience of managing EU Civitas programme
He is currently involved in the Civitas programme for City Car Club, partner in a consortium with Malmo and Norwich councils. He has worked on the Civitas programme with Bristol City Council as a contractor delivering car club expansion.

Reducing carbon footprint and cost of travel and transport
He has experience of reviewing travel options with major transport users, and he is working on the wider use of car pooling as an alterative to private car use (grey fleet). He has been involved over several years with local authorities, universities and other employers mainly in using car club cars as pool cars, booked on the internet and billed monthly (e.g. City of Edinburgh Council).

Developers and planners – Residents’ Travel Plans and S.106 agreements
He led a team that was commissioned by house builders to prepare detailed schemes to include car clubs and car sharing to meet the challenge of reduced parking and traffic.

Other skills: management of staff and budgets; commissioning design and print; managing media relations; commissioning web sites; conference and event planning; meeting facilitation.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
City Car Club (Smart Moves Limited) Feb 99 - Aug 07
Founder and director, City Car Club, the first commercial car club operator in UK, he sourced insurance, vehicles and implemented the use of new telematics systems. He pioneered new car clubs in Bristol, London and Edinburgh, branded as City Car Club and in 2005 took on the “development” role. In 2006 the company hit a turnover of £1M (2006).
He undertook consultancy work for developers on projected impact of car club on parking for use in planning application for a variety of locations, including Edinburgh.
He represented Carplus on the Countryside Agency’s national Rural Transport Partnership (RTP) and he initiated the establishment of a national accreditation programme for car clubs.

SWAP (Save Waste and Prosper Ltd) Aug 89 - Nov 97
Executive Director of not-for-profit waste and environmental consultancy, which undertook pioneering research on waste separation through an analysis of household waste from 100 families in Leeds. From the results of this work, SWAP advised Leeds City Council on promotion of kerbside recycling. To generate growth, he developed a range of research and consultancy activities in recycling and waste separation and as interest in recycling grew, several blue-chip companies were recruited as clients, including ASDA Stores Ltd, B&Q plc and ICI Dulux. This work began with recycling projects but with B&Q moved into the whole environmental programme and its impact on product packaging. He contributed sections to How Green Is My Hammer and How Green Is My Front Door, B&Q's first two corporate environmental reviews. From this initial work SWAP developed a significant role with B&Q’s supplier auditing on both packaging and hazards
He worked for five years as lead consultant to ICI Paints, initially to develop an effective national paint recycling programme. This started with two pilot schemes – in Leeds and West London - and moved to a nationwide roll-out. He was a founder of the National Household Hazardous Waste Forum (a cross-sector body)..

Friends of the Earth (UK 2000 Projects Unit) 88 - 89
He was employed as Business Development Officer in the projects team at FoE, advising local environmental organisations on setting up and expanding businesses.

Leeds City Council 83 - 86
He joined the Business Development section and provided support to local co-operative and community business developers.

Highlands & Islands Development Board (now HIE) 79 - 83
He was Community Co-operatives Development Officer, promoting innovative grants and loans programme to communities in most remote parts of the sub-region.

EDUCATION AND RELATED EXPERIENCE
Sheffield Hallam University
Postgraduate diploma in Urban Regeneration 1999

Cardiff University BSc (Econ) degree in Sociology 1970

Common Purpose Leeds 97/98 programme

Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship award to study innovative approaches to waste in USA, Canada and Denmark 1991.

Member, Transport Planning Society.