Decision

1. The Council becoming the accountable body and accepting up to £124,000 of Low Emission Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) grant funding, and
2. The Council entering into a grant funding agreement with South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA).

Reasons for the decision

The Low Emission Vehicle Infrastructure funding scheme is assigned funding being issued to authorities around the country by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles and the Energy Savings Trust. The funding is designed to ensure that authorities have the resource and funding to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This infrastructure is designed to support residents without access to off-street parking, but want to charge their electric vehicles.

The proposed option offers the Council access to capability grant funding to finance and deliver the future Low Emission Vehicle Infrastructure capital funding scheme. £8.9M has been awarded to SYMCA and a portion of the grant will be allocated to Barnsley, with works anticipated to take place in September 2024.

Accepting this funding supports the Council’s corporate and strategic ambitions in delivering on the key issue of the Climate Emergency; the addition of new charging points in the borough will support residents to transition from the use of fossil fuels to cleaner technologies, such as electric vehicles.

The fund will support the upskilling of existing Council staff and provide well paid jobs, ensuring that specialist knowledge is retained in-house. It will also mean that the Council is able to benefit from a share of any revenue that is generated from the scheme and re-invest it into other Council services.

The use of electric vehicles in the borough will contribute to improvements in local air quality and have a positive impact on health and wellbeing.

The procurement of this is currently being arranged by SYMCA with BMBC involvement. 

Lessons learned from previous electric vehicle (EV) charging operating models will be applied to limit any strategic, operational and financial risk to BMBC. The operation and maintenance will be assigned to a third party provider. In the event of the assigned third party declaring Administration, the contract would be re-issued to an alternative provider.

Other EV projects can be delivered alongside this scheme and accepting this funding will not have implications on any future EV charging strategy or installations.

Alternative options considered

Not accepting funding would mean that residents miss out on the opportunity of accessing additional infrastructure and charging points in the borough. It would also mean that the Council would not benefit from any revenue share or be able to invest skills in a specialist roles and knowledge that can be retained in-house; both of which would be used to support other Council related projects and services.