One of the most important parts of securing the future of a region’s electric vehicle infrastructure is making sure that there correct funding and procurement model is in place. Should this side go wrong, communities can be left without the adequate amount of charging points, or without the necessary quality for their needs.
To help those across local government understand more of what is available to them when they are looking at funding and procuring their EV charging infrastructure, Public Sector Executive and Believ came together for the third in a series of insightful webinars.
Webinar host and Believ’s Head of Public Sector Partnerships Charlie Allen was joined by Transport for Wales’ Steve Ward (Decarbonisation Programme Manager), London Councils’ Mark Fletcher (Commercial Officer), and Martin Schaeferbarthold (ULEV Project Manager) from Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.
The conversation commenced with Martin being asked about the role that councils play in the delivery of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. He said that: “It’s not a core council service to deliver charging facilities for people. It isn’t a core part of what highways teams are there for - they’re there to provide access for people on foot and in vehicles – so I guess the approach that we’ve taken, and it seems to be the approach that many local authorities have taken, is that if we can find ways of encouraging other people to invest in this infrastructure, rather than putting money from the public purse or borrowing money specifically to put into it.”
Martin then continued by explaining the benefits of this, with it ensuring that the funding is the risk of the private sector, as opposed to the public sector: “We leave that risk element to the private sector, and we act as an enabling and contracting function. Actually it means that potentially a significant volume of capital can be made available much more speedily by allowing private sector partners to take that lead role in investment.”
Another aspect of the way that electric vehicle charging infrastructure is procured is the structuring of contracts. In Wales, for example, local authorities are looking to favour an approach that involves concession contracts expanding on this, Steve said: “We are now seeing the concession contract being the model, I think the 2.0 of that will be where it’s more of a partnership with the CPO (Charge Point Operator), where there’s a joint agreement on things like sites and levels of provision.”
To learn more about the options that are available to your local authority when funding or procuring your electric vehicle charging infrastructure, listen to the entire webinar on demand here.
