As the Government prepares to roll out its Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund, local authorities may have a renewed focus on delivering their EV plans.
This is essential if we are to achieve the Government target of 300,000 EV charge points by 2030, when the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned.
It is vital this renewed focus comes with an understanding of the timescales involved.
With just 12% of the 300,000 charge points currently installed, the roll-out pace of EV infrastructure is glacial and suggests the industry has been lacking urgency, in part, because of a lack of understanding that it can take as long as two and a half years to get a charge point in the ground.
Before any works can begin, a local authority needs to have a charge point strategy in place. Creating and obtaining wider council support for, and implementing this strategy is made significantly easier by having a dedicated lead officer for EV infrastructure. The recruitment process plus the strategy development, often takes up to nine months.
Our Local Authority Insight Report found one-third (31%) of local authorities have no formal EV infrastructure plan in place, and almost half (44%) do not expect to complete one within the next three years. More worrying still, only 14% have dedicated EV infrastructure resources, and 3% have none.
If local authorities want to use the LEVI fund, experience of the pilot scheme has shown it can take 12 months for the funding decision. The Office for Zero Emission Vehicle (OZEV) says it will release the fund in two tranches: in the financial year 23/24, and another in 24/25 – suggesting there will be another year to wait if the initial application is unsuccessful. Six months is then required to identify the most appropriate sites, and a further three for deployment – taking the total to 30 months. This process can be reduced to fewer than 15 months by going directly to a charge point operator (CPO), such as Liberty Charge. Our end-to-end solution removes almost all the management, administration and planning burdens, to deliver (post-strategy creation) within six months, with zero reliance on LEVI or any other public funding.
The UK will not create the infrastructure needed to serve EV demand without significantly ramping up the installation pace. And local authorities need to have greater visibility of the timescales involved to appreciate the required urgency. It is also important that if LEVI fund applications are rejected, there are CPOs, such as Liberty Charge, that provide a privately funded, end-to-end service at zero cost to the council or the tax-payer.