South Hams District Council EV Strategy Consultation Outcomes

 

A consultation on the Council’s EV strategy took place between 17th February and 17th March 2023. The council began its pre-election period on 23rd March 2023 where it was not possible to report on the outcomes.

The consultation was survey based with links posted in Council bulletins, on social media with a PR sent to media agencies in advance of the consultation beginning. The survey was short and asked respondents to rate their agreement with our chosen actions on a sliding scale, the end of the survey had some open-ended responses where participants were able to write about opportunities for the council’s fleet as well as anything else they felt might be missing from the strategy.

261 people responded to the consultation and out of all the questions asked, respondents predominantly agreed or strongly agreed with the actions.

Q1: We’re looking to identify opportunities to support research and innovation in electric vehicles. One part of this would be to submit a new bid under the new Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure scheme. This would involve a call for sites to identify areas for off-street rural charging hubs. Do you think this action would benefit your area?

Q2: We’re looking to promote and support community charge schemes, such as Zap-Home and Co Charger. Both organisations have a network of residences with home charge points of users that have decided to share them with other EV drivers.  Would supporting these organisations be beneficial in your area?

Q3: We’re looking to promote the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) Workplace Charging Scheme to businesses and workplaces in the district. The scheme provides eligible businesses with support towards the upfront costs of the purchase and installation of EV charging points. Do you think us promoting the scheme is worthwhile?

Q4: We want to work with Devon County Council, OLEV and the National Grid to install ten more charging points at Council-owned car parks. Would this be beneficial to EV drivers in the South Hams?

Q5: We want to encourage supermarkets, rail stations and other partners and stakeholders to deliver EV charging points at other key destinations across the South Hams. Do you think this is worth us doing?

Q7: Do you think our EV strategy should include investigating other methods of e-mobility, such as e-bikes or car sharing?

Two open ended questions were asked,

Q6. What else do you think the Council can do to help improve the number of EV charging points in the South Hams?

And

Q8. Is there anything the Council should specifically be doing as it transitions its "light vehicle" fleet to electric vehicles?

In terms of question 6, there were some comments and suggestions that are beneficial to explore or comment on

Comment

SHDC Response

Provide grants to homeowners to install charging points if they will share them with others - on co-charger or zap-home (4 similar comments)

Something we will explore in collaboration with Devon County Council

Grants to support businesses to install charging points immediately.

The Workplace Parking Scheme exists for this reason

Publicise where they are. They should be in all SHDC parking lots. You need to think that car production after 2030 is EVs only

A new section of our website will list this as they go on online

Locals discounted pre-pay scheme.

 

To consider as part of wider charging bids, although this can only be achieved through our own EV charging installs and something we will consider

Look at installing lamppost chargers (4 comments)

 

Streetlighting is largely owned by Devon County Council. Constraints dictate this is not feasible currently

Encourage the creation of sustainable transport hubs in partnership with organisations like Co-Cars/Co-Bikes, and trailing further locations for shared transport. For each chargepoint they deliver 1 open chargepoint, 1 for the shared car.

 

To be explored through a call for sites exercise.

Charging points at council owned business units

 

We are exploring the feasibility of installing charging points at these units and managed by SHDC.

Ensure planning approvals require EV charging (8 comments).

 

2021 Part S building regs now require this, minimum standards exist in planning now for commercial, between 11 and 22 kW.

‘Channel’ across pavements so homeowners can manage EV charging when they don’t have a private/off street driveway.
Promote and encourage much more …. People are not getting behind this as they need to and charging is one of 3 main reasons. Cost and range are the others, but the councils can’t fix that

 

Pavement Gully trials will be conducted by Devon County Council as highway authority. Pavement Gullies are an ambition within their own EV strategy

Encourage all pubs and restaurants to have rapid chargers.

 

We will include this within action EV.3

Help Parish councils and community buildings identify and install community charging facilities in their parishes. (6 similar comments).

 

A call for sites will be conducted, sites collated through this exercise will inform a bid under LEVI in collaboration with Devon County Council and other Devon Councils

Install at tourist car parks ideally in conjunction with adjacent solar pv array.

SHDC has investigated Solar Canopies and many of our sites are not feasible due to size and other physical constraints. Some are and will be considered in due course.

Could discussions be held with the national trust about their parking facilities? they are typically in remote locations in the South Hams and really should be stepping it up in terms of this type of offer

We will do this

Encourage active travel, use cars less.

 

We need to accommodate multi modal travel uses, to accommodate this requires bespoke pieces of work. Active Travel will form part of our Shared Prosperity Fund work and we will be producing a new Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan.

Add EV points to car parks within towns, such as Heath’s Nursery and Victoria Street in Totnes.

Victoria Street Car Park now has EV chargers

               

As for question 8, there were some comments and suggestions that are beneficial to explore or comment on

Comment

SHDC Response

consider funding e-bike hire schemes in rural areas.

 

We have already funded two trials, due to start in late summer in Totnes and Dartmouth, other locations have potential, but the outcomes of the trails are needed to ascertain levels of investment required and ancillary benefits

Think about what you are trying to achieve before jumping on the electric only bandwagon. Eg hydrogen power is green if the hydrogen is produced from renewable energy sources.

 

In 2018, The Climate Change Committee (CCC) published a report regarding the role of Hydrogen in a low carbon economy. While battery electric vehicles are now well placed to deliver the bulk of decarbonisation for cars and vans, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles could play an important role for heavy-duty vehicles (e.g. buses, trains and lorries) and potentially for longer-range journeys in lighter vehicles, where the need to store and carry large amounts of energy is greater. There is also a potentially important role in decarbonising shipping, especially if an international market in low-carbon hydrogen or ammonia develops. The primary issue with Hydrogen is that because renewables are needed to produce truly ‘green’[1] hydrogen, producing hydrogen in bulk from electrolysis in this way would be much more expensive and would entail extremely challenging build rates for zero-carbon electricity generation capacity, curtailing renewable energy from the grid supply. Therefore, the IPCC and the Climate Change Committee sees its role mainly in hard to decarbonise industries like shipping, aviation, and steel manufacturing (and other heat intensive industrial processes)

Don’t use public charging points until the availability is very much higher than it is now.

 

We will be building and providing enough of our own EV chargers for fleet vehicles and don’t envisage fleet users using public chargers

Convert to EV school buses and refuse collection vehicles (3 comments)

 

At this stage we are only looking at our light vehicle fleet, switching Refuse Collection Vehicles to electric is not yet feasible due to routing demands. School busses are run and owned by Devon County Council

Publicise performance data on light vehicle fleet, EV and non-EV to give locals a better idea on what performance is possible in our locality. eg small roads, hills etc

 

Dependant on the systems used to monitor performance, carbon reduction and running costs we will publish what’s available.

Put in more chargers to Council premises car parks. There should be another bank of chargers available at Follaton House and ALSO on the side available to the public on weekends and out-of-business hours...don't gate off the next lot of installed chargers please!

 

We are conducting feasibility studies at all Council premises to install chargers and to upgrade and increase the number of chargers at locations that currently have chargers. The next phase of charger installation at FH will see rapid charging which will be available 24/7 and not gated-off. Car parks are also be reviewed and where feasible proposals will be put forward.

Encourage sub-contractors and partners of the council to investigate what they can do with their vehicles to make them more environmentally friendly.

 

This can form part of our procurement questions/processes

 


[1] Green hydrogen is made using electrolysers powered by renewable electricity, while blue hydrogen is made using natural gas.