York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has taken delivery of nine Nissan electric Townstar vans, with another five expected to arrive shortly.

The vehicles are being used by the trust’s security and estates teams, as well as carrying out important tasks such as transporting blood samples and delivering furniture and other bulky items to hospitals and surgeries in and around North Yorkshire.

The Townstars are successors to a number of e-NV200s, the vehicle’s predecessor.

Philip Bland, transport manager at York Teaching Hospital Facilities Management, said: "Townstar ticks every box for us, in the same way that e-NV200 did."

"Aside from purely practical considerations, it’s a super vehicle and we get plenty of positive feedback from our drivers – they say it’s just like driving a car.

"The vans are put to all sorts of uses – our skilled tradespeople such as joiners, plumbers and painters use them, as well as our CCTV teams and other colleagues. They need to be able to adapt to all kinds of uses – and they are excellent at doing that. We’re delighted with them."

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides a comprehensive range of hospital and specialist healthcare services for approximately 800,000 people living in and around York, North Yorkshire and Ryedale – an area covering 3,400 square miles.