Reform Staffordshire County Council withdraws from electric vehicle infrastructure consortium

Withdrawal from the Midlands Connect-led regional consortium, which also involved councils in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, means the Staffordshire authority will be able to spend its share of the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) funding on locally-determined priorities instead, a cabinet report said.

Staffordshire County Council was allocated £4.6m from the Government last year to help the private sector to deliver public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure to help meet growing demand. The previous Conservative county council administration joined the Midlands consortium, committing 90 per cent of its LEVI funding to a joint procurement for on-street electric vehicle infrastructure in communities.

On Wednesday (October 15) the county council’s new cabinet, formed after the May elections, backed plans to withdraw from the consortium. Members also agreed for the development of a new business case for the remaining 90 per cent of LEVI funding, to be prepared by officers and submitted to the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles for feedback.

Speaking before the meeting, Councillor Andrew Mynors, cabinet member for connectivity, said: “The LEVI programme is important in delivering the right type of charging infrastructure to meet the needs of electric vehicle owners in Staffordshire. It’s vital then that we utilise what is a considerable amount of funding in a way that is beneficial to everyone.

“After careful consideration, our renewed focus as a county council is on charging infrastructure on publicly owned land such as car parks and community hubs - this will help to minimise disruption on local roads which would result from on-street charging. It’s therefore our intention to withdraw from the LEVI consortium so we can direct our allocation of funding to local priority areas.”

Council leader Ian Cooper, who presented the proposals in the absence of Councillor Mynors at Wednesday’s meeting, said: “We have a responsibility to public money to spend it wisely, whether it be money raised within the local authority or whether it be money received from local government centrally. It is public money and therefore we have a duty of care.”

Fellow cabinet members welcomed the move. Councillor Chris Large, cabinet member for finance and resources, said: “I think that this is a good step forward – none of us are against the advent of technology and the electric charging, it was the methodology and the delivery we were not comfortable with.

“At the end of the day, where we were looking to place these areas there was little or no demand within the documentation and no evidence to support that. I’m pleased we have been able to take a sensible common-sense approach to this in trying to move it forward.”

Councillor Peter Mason, cabinet member for strategic highways, said: “This approach will bring real benefits for communities and it will make it equitable. We already have issues of parking and conflict every day across our terraced street areas; they weren’t built for the number of vehicles you see, but they get them anyway.

“Adding a charging point outside one house that somebody 25 doors down wants to access only adds to that stress and conflict and difficulty. By putting them in community hubs and community areas, we make this available across the entire community on an equitable level; we also reduce the infrastructure disruption and cost around providing these by not digging up every road in a particular area.”