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We're supporting Local Authorities to progress their EV Strategies by providing insight and recommendations
In 2024, we worked with England’s Economic Heartland and CENEX to understand how Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) in the Transport East area have progressed their EV plans. These were published in the REVEAL report which:
- provides an update to the baseline stats made from our previous study in 2023, and includes the latest figures for EV uptake and EVCI rollout.
- outlines insight from transport officers in the region through workshops.
- evaluates LTAs' EV strategies, action plans and progress of chargepoint rollout, and provides recommendations to support future decision-making.
Updating the baseline data
The REVEAL data shows the latest figure of EVs owned and publicly available charging points within the Transport East region. The data demonstrates:
- Between Q3 2022 - Q3 2023, the number of EVs has increased from 32,300 to 46,800. This is an increase of 14,500 or 45%.
- Between January 2023 - January 2024, installations of EV Charging Infrastructure increased from 1,300 to 1,860 sockets. This is a year-on-year increase of 560 charging points or 43%.
Engagement with Local Transport Authorities
To gather further insight into the challenges and opportunities to rollout charging infrastructure, a series of workshops were held with officers from the East’s LTAs to discuss:
- Suitable quantitative growth indicators to measure EV and EVI uptake.
- Local authority progress in planning and delivering local EVI networks.
- A SWOT analysis of the planning and delivery of local EVI networks.
Feedback from officers supported the below findings.
Key findings from REVEAL
- In most regards, LTAs have made significant progress to support the uptake of EVs and efficiently rollout on EVCI. This includes strong progress of LTA’s EV action plans, procurement, and building partnerships, likely a result of the application process for the LEVI fund.
- Growth in EV adoption is being driven by private vehicle buyers, rather than businesses, highlighting the potential need for further engagement to gather insight on businesses and fleet operators views on the transition to EV.
There still remain some common challenges:
- Officers identified difficulties in recruiting and/or developing appropriate human resources and skills, which holds back certain aspects of EV strategy progress.
- Some officers also expressed a concern about negative press, language surrounding EVs, the need for greater public awareness, accurate information, positive news and myth busting.
Recommendations going forward
Encouraging the shift the cleaner and alternative fuels is a major step forward to decarbonising the region and as the Sub-national Transport Body for the East, it's recommended that we support the coordination and capability of LTAs to accelerate and improve the efficiency of EVCI rollout.
Other recommendations include:
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- Advocating for multi-year budgets to make longer term, multi-year plans, which would help LTAs to achieve higher scores in the “action plan” category.
- Data on EV registrations and EVI installations should be reviewed at quarterly intervals to ensure that progress is maintained and sufficient charging points are available in the right places.
- LTAs should be encouraged and supported to include quantifiable targets in their EV and EVI reports to make monitoring easier.