Transport Insights

The Department for Transport (DfT) has put out another press release with big numbers quoted out of context, this time a “New £63 million boost for Britain’s electric vehicle revolution”.

Whether the boost is new is always the first question, with the age-old tradition of announcing a funding envelope and then each tranche of funding from it as a separate “new” boost.

It looks as if the £63m is drawn from the “£200m for charging infrastructure” announced in the Autumn budget.

The details are quite vague: £25m for local authorities, £8m for the NHS and the rest apparently for a “major new grant scheme to help businesses install charging points at depots nationwide”, which the government says it “is launching” but only on the basis that it intends to launch it.

The money is said to “build on” – implicitly to be additional to – the “£400 million announced in the Spending Review to support charging infrastructure, including on the strategic road network”, or rather the redirected portion of the £950 rapid charging fund that Labour scrapped.

The cash for local authorities is not explicitly stated to be from the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund, which was announced under the *previous* government and as far as I can see had two tranches of capital funding in 2023-24 and 2024-25 totalling £343m, with £38m of capability funding.

Which brings us back to the fake announcement in June that “Local authorities across England are set to enter into contracts with chargepoint operators”.

The basis for this story was that “Over 100,000 new chargepoints are being delivered thanks to the existing government funding from the £381 million Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund, providing support to industry and local authorities across England” i.e. we haven’t done anything new but want to take the credit for stuff that is in train thanks to funding from the last lot.

In December 2024 the DfT announced a £22m extension to the LEVI Capability Fund for 2025-26, but no further capital funding.

The announcement has many more random numbers to make it look as if the EV transition is going swimmingly, while disguising the fact that Labour has clawed back previously announced cash.

Also making headlines are the DfT’s support for “innovative cross-pavement technology”, i.e. gullies in pavements to allow people to run cables from their homes to their roadside cars, and the announcement that the government is also “modernising EV charging signage on major roads”.