Nottingham City Homes is now sending out its 312-strong fleet of brand new vans onto the streets of Nottingham.

The Citroen Dispatch and Relay LCV vans are being leased as part of NCH's £142million repairs contract that was awarded by Nottingham City Council earlier this year.

The old fleet is now being replaced at a rate of six vans per day and currently Nottingham City Homes (NCH) has more than 50 vans running on the streets of Nottingham. The entire fleet will be fully operational by the end of October this year.

The vans will be officially launched at Nottingham Forest's City Ground on Tuesday 12 August at 4pm as part of NCH's Meet the Supplier event which aims to engage its employees and representatives from other public sector organisations to learn more about the companies that support NCH and to share knowledge and experience.

Mark Johnson, director of Property Services at Nottingham City Homes, said: "It is great to see the new vans starting to head out onto our streets and into our estates.

"The replacement of these vans has been a huge project for our procurement team. They have secured a fleet of vans with all the latest technology and tools at a cheaper rate."

According to NCH the new vans have a range of features that will improve the level of service it provides. These include:

*Smartnav - a system that uses satellite navigation and traffic information to find the quickest and most appropriate route and guide drivers around congestion
*Support from Trafficmaster's Assist centre, which means the vans can instantly check destinations, provide routes and even connect to emergency and breakdown services
*A Service provided by Trafficmaster, known as Fleet Director, which allows NCH to locate the nearest vehicle, containing the correct service engineer, and direct them to the next repair request by entering the Customers post code, resulting in reduced costs and providing a more efficient service
*The Citroen's HDi diesel engines are able to run on up to 30 per cent bio diesel, without any technical modifications. This environmentally friendly solution could become standard for the fleet in the future.