The government funding comes from a £381million Local Electric Vehicle (LEVI) fund to councils across the country

Waltham Forest this week received millions of government funding to install new electric vehicle charging points.

The funding comes from a total £381million Local Electric Vehicle (LEVI) fund to councils across the country. Following the approval of the first five local authority applications in February, payments to 44 additional councils in the UK have now been approved to help residents charge their vehicles.

The other London councils that are set to receive their funding are Kingston and Sutton (£886,000) Richmond, Wandsworth and Merton (£2.56m) and Newham and Redbridge who each received £4.32m.

The Department for Transport (DfT) says the funding will support the delivery of thousands of charge-points across London.

Technology and decarbonisation minister Anthony Browne said: “This government has a plan to help speed up the installation of EV chargepoints, which we’re getting on and delivering across London.

This dedicated funding to local councils in London is part of our plan to ensure people can switch from a petrol or diesel car to an EV when they choose to do so.”

To help councils deliver EV infrastructure, the government-funded electric vehicle infrastructure training course will launch in full this week following a successful trial. The course is open to all local authorities and will cover key topics from technology to procurement. LEVI funding has already helped to place almost 150 dedicated EV officers in councils to support chargepoint planning and delivery.

More and more drivers are making the switch to electric vehicles, with fully electric vehicles accounting for over 16% of the new UK car market in 2023, according to industry statistics. 56,983 public chargepoints have now installed across the UK which represents a 47% increase compared to this time last year.

Today’s announcement comes following the introduction of the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate into law earlier this year. The ZEV mandate requires 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold in Great Britain to be zero emission by 2030, and 100% by 2035.

The move away from petrol cars is an issue that Chingford and Woodford Green MP Iain Duncan Smith has been vocally opposed to.

In a blog posted on his site in August last year, the MP rallied against plans to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030 as part of that emissions-cutting bid.

In his blog he added that the “cost of net zero will be paid by every household”, while on Twitter/X he posted that “the drive to achieve the 2030 net zero deadline on petrol and diesel cars means the UK being swamped with cheap electric cars made in China using huge amounts of fossil fuels”.

In September, the government announced it was pushing its ban on petrol and diesel car sales back to 2035 as part of a wider roll-back of some of its climate commitments.

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.