The National Travel Survey from the UK's Department for Transport is an annual publication that contains a huge wealth of information for anyone who cares to wade through its pages.
The 2014 National Travel Survey has recently been published and shows that 3% of all trips made by people living in England are business trips and that these represent 10% of the distance travelled per person per year.
The survey notes that there has been a long-term downward trend in most types of travel.
Business trips are no exception as can be seen in this week's chart below.
Continued below
The figures encompass all types of business trip, from international air journeys to nipping out in the car to see a client for a small, local business for example. The chart reveals that the distance travelled per year and the number of trips are closely correlated, suggesting that the length of business trips has changed little. This is indeed the case - the average business trip length has hovered around 20 miles over the entire period under scrutiny.
The survey says that the reasons for the decline are not clear but suggests that the spread of new working patterns — such as homeworking — might have an impact on travel behaviour. It also reveals that employees who work in the same office or workplace every day tend to take far fewer business trips than those who are home-based.