Have your say on the draft West Northamptonshire Electric Vehicles Infrastructure Strategy 2024-2030

Overview

We would like your feedback on our West Northamptonshire Electric Vehicles Infrastructure Strategy.  

Background 

West Northamptonshire Council is committed to achieving net zero for its own activities by 2030 and across the West Northamptonshire area by 2045. This is to support the Net Zero Government Initiative for 2050, helping to address the climate emergency and support our residents in their transition to electric mobility. To achieve this, we all need to use motorised travel less, substantially increase our use of public transport and, where car travel is unavoidable, only use fully zero-emission vehicles by 2045. Additionally, national government has future plans to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, and sales of electric vehicles are already rising rapidly across our area and the country at large.

To meet and support increases in the number of EVs, there is an urgent need to develop and expand the current charging EV infrastructure within West Northamptonshire.

Introducing the strategy 

The draft West Northamptonshire Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy (EVI strategy) outlines key areas of work which will help to support a roll out of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles across West Northamptonshire. 

We are working closely with internal council departments such as Highways, Planning, and the Local Transport team and have also consulted with the Energy Saving Trust, Charge Point Operators and other Councils to learn from their experience.

We know that the availability of public charge point infrastructure is a real barrier holding people back from transitioning to an electric vehicle. This draft strategy looks forward and sets out what we want to achieve in the future and provides detail of how we intend to do this. 

Within the draft strategy we have outlined the following five objectives:

• To have appropriate charging for EVs,
• To ensure charging networks are reliable, affordable, accessible, and maintained,
• To support transport decarbonisation policies, 
• To support economic growth,
• To improve and make best use of land and assets available.

We are also preparing an application to apply for £2.8m capital funding from the Government's local EV infrastructure (LEVI) fund. The funding secured will enable us to attract charge points operators (CPOs) for the rollout of predominantly on-street, local EV charging.

Related documentation

• Executive Summary (PDF, 1104KB)
• Draft West Northamptonshire Electric Vehicles Infrastructure Strategy 2024-2030 (PDF, 3371KB)

Why your views matter 

This draft strategy sets out a forecast of the scale of anticipated demand for charge points over the next few years and the actions the council and partners can take to support the rollout of this new infrastructure.

If you have an interest in electric vehicles, we would like to hear what you think.

Your feedback will help shape our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure strategy, ensuring it aligns with the needs and aspirations of our community, and contributes to achieving net zero emissions goals.

What happens next? 

Responses from this consultation will be considered and inform the final Strategy, which will be further reviewed by internal and external stakeholders including our Highways and Local Transport teams, the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, and the Energy Saving Trust. It will be presented to our Cabinet for final approval and adoption by the end of 2024.  

How to have your say 

You can have your say on the draft strategy by completing an online survey using the ’Give us your views’ link at the bottom of this page.  

The survey is split into sections. You do not have to complete each section of this consultation if you do not want to. Once you have finished all the sections you wish to complete, please ensure you return to the content page and select ‘Finish’. 

If you need assistance to complete the online questionnaire, would like a copy of it in another format, or respond via an alternative method our contact details are as follows:

Email address: evinfrastructure@westnorthants.gov.uk

Postal address:

• EV Infrastructure Consultation
• West Northamptonshire Council
• The Guildhall 
• St Giles' Street
• Northampton
• NN1 1DE

This consultation ends 23:59 Sunday 15 September 2024

For information about how your responses are managed please see the Consultation and Engagement Privacy Notice.

What happens next

Responses from this consultation will be considered and inform the final Strategy, which will be further reviewed by internal and external stakeholders including our Highways and Local Transport teams, the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, and the Energy Saving Trust. It will be presented to our Cabinet for final approval and adoption by the end of 2024.