Speaking at the inaugural Business and a Sustainable Environment event in London today, Defra’s head of procurement and commercial, Andrew Croston, said that it was making people take more responsibility for the travel they undertake on behalf of the organisation. “We are making budget holders responsible for what and how they spend and asking them to get more active in policing.”

The organisation says it is using a triangular approach to managing the cost of travel, with purchase demand management, supply side management and total cost management making up the three sides.

Defra spends around £5 million a year on travel out of a total budget of £1.2 billion and uses Carlson Wagonlit Travel as its travel management company.

One initiative on the cost management side was to introduce a rail ticket printer in Defra’s office in Whitehall. “We have a machine based in our office and get our train tickets from there. It saves us around £10,000 a year and makes rail travel easier for our staff,” he said.

The organisation has also introduced a policy called “Mind how you go”, which encourages civil servants to take rail rather than air for domestic travel.

“If you want to travel by air domestically, you have to present a business case and have it signed off. I see that having a drastic impact,” he said.

Defra is also re-educating its staff on the need to travel at all. It is currently training 2,500 people about videoconferencing. Croston says uptake of videoconferencing has grown by 500% in the year, although the system still had plenty of capacity to reduce demand for business travel further.

Croston added that the company did not necessarily focus entirely on price in its tenders, both in travel and beyond. “At most advanced stages of a tender, we focus 30% on price and 70% on the technical elements. I don’t want to buy poor quality.”

Nigel Turner, director of public sector at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, speaking during the same session said: “All organisations really need to think how they categorise the sort of interactions that are going on. Could you use audio conferencing, web conferencing or telepresence instead of travelling?”

Base, held at London’s ExCel, was co-founded by Christopher Broadbent and Andrew Dowding and attracted speakers such as Jonathon Porritt, Ed Milliband and Hilary Benn. It is designed to bring together businesses interested in the challenges of adapting to a low-carbon economy.