The Wiltshire Council website has announced that the Council has been awarded £480,000 over the next two years by the Department for Transport (DfT) to spend on staff who will plan and support delivery of growth in the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure across the county.
This windfall will not actually be spent on charging points. Rather, the funding will be spent on five project officers that will be tasked with creating an EV Infrastructure Strategy that will research and set out the sites and maps of EV charge points that will be installed around the county.
The DfT's Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund supports local authorities in England to develop infrastructure for residents that do not have access to off-street parking, such as on drives. The new 5-person team will also apply for more DfT LEVI funding of up to £3.88m, a figure set by the DfT, to bring EV infrastructure providers on board to install more charge points throughout Wiltshire, with an emphasis of ensuring that there are suitable public charging facilities in areas that would not usually attract commercial charge points.
Cllr Caroline Thomas, Cabinet Member for Transport, said: To enable more people to use electric vehicles, we need an improved network of chargers here in Wiltshire. Usually, EV infrastructure providers look to provide chargers in areas that are most profitable for them, and that can leave out rural areas.
Revenue funding is targeted on increasing our capacity to do more, so must be spent on officers rather than the chargers themselves. This new team will look to create a county-wide strategy and bring in providers that will install chargers into villages as well as towns, in areas where residents do not have access to off-street parking.
Once the new team is in place, they will look to secure further LEVI funding of up to £3.88m to realise the EV Infrastructure Strategy and install more chargers throughout Wiltshire.
So, will every village in Wiltshire now get an EV charger? I wonder.
If not, this must be a new take on an old joke: How many people does it take not to install any EV charging points? Five – at huge cost.
Responses
Fascinating. I had a long comment but keeping it simple; I hope these five experts talk with electric vehicle users to get real data input. It's like spending money on a plan on how to devise the plan.