A £250m a year capital investment fund granted to the nine metro mayors is doing little to support the UK’s EV transition, according to new research from Novuna Vehicle Solutions.
The report from Novuna, formerly Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions, states despite a mandate to invest the money in open-to-all EV infrastructure projects, only a limited number of charging points were installed in 2021 across the nine city regions.
Each mayor has access to a relative share of a £7.45bn capital investment fund over a 30 year period, equating to £250m for each calendar year. These budgets are in addition to the availability of the £6.8bn City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement, which allows the metro mayors (with the exception of North of Tyne) to bid to fund initiatives that work towards decarbonising transport, in line with national priorities.
Novuna said there is no evidence that the fund, set to be shared from 2022-2027 between the eight eligible Mayors, is being put towards EV infrastructure.
Its research compared the funds allocated to each city region in their respective devolution deals with the number of publicly funded EV chargers installed last year in each city.
Investigation of the official Statement of Accounts of the metro mayors and their combined authorities turned up limited evidence of investment in EV infrastructure over the 2020/21 tax year. West Yorkshire was the only city region to explicitly reference expenditure on charging points in its accounts, with the installation of 88 electric vehicle charging points as part of the region’s £3.2m ULEV Taxi Scheme.
While in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the only instance of an EV-related scheme in its Local Transport Plan is a £90,000 project to install four rapid electric vehicle chargers for the local taxi trade.
Greater Manchester, which has the one of the highest allocated investment funds of £900m, does not have a single mention of EV infrastructure in its Statement of Accounts. Novuna added it is difficult to ascertain how many of the charging points in the authority’s EV Charging Infrastructure Strategy are actively going into the ground.
Robert Gordon, CEO of Novuna, said: “The metro mayors were installed with the clear goal of boosting the economic and infrastructural development of strategically important regions across the UK.
“There are understandably a number of competing priorities, however, if the government hopes to fulfil its headline pledge to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030, a top priority for city transport projects needs to be upgrading regional EV infrastructure. As it stands, we see very little evidence that this is happening at the pace required.”
