Recommendation 17

The Department for Transport informed us there will now be a “shift” in focus from funding for home charging to on-street and other publicly available local charging. The government has doubled investment for the current year for the on-street residential charge scheme and will be doubling it to £20 million for next year too. It has committed £90 million to support larger local charging.36 The National Audit Office has however reported that the take-up of funding for local authorities to support on-street residential charge points has previously been poor with almost a third of the allocated funding of £8.5 million not used.37 The Department acknowledged that these programmes tended to be underspent and pointed to capacity and appetite at local authority level, and commercial interests focusing on rapid and destination charging as reasons for the slow take-up.38 We have heard from representative bodies that some local authorities have a lack of in-house 28 Q 13 29 Q 31 30 Q 32 31 Q 35 32 C&AG’s Report, para 2.21 33 Q 35 34 Qq 12, 35 35 Q 12; C&AG’s Report, para 2.24 36 Qq 38, 40 37 C&AG’s Report, para 2.19 38 Q 39 12 Low emission cars expertise impacting on their ability to bid for funding.39 The Department told us that while it is not undertaking direct capacity funding, it is working with local authorities through the Energy Saving Trust to help them understand how to access funding and accelerate charging.40 39 British Parking Association submission page 2 40 Qq 38, 41 Low emission cars 13 2 Wider impacts of the transition Environmental and social impacts