Highland Council to start charging for 'filling up' electric cars
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Highland councillors have agreed to start making motorists pay for using electric vehicle charging points but the fees are among the highest in Scotland, sparking concern from some members.
Last year the free charging points ran up an annual bill of more than £50,000 so now Highland Council will join the 10 other local authorities that take payments to use them.
The plan to get users to pay for what they use starts from June 1 but the price raised eyebrows of some councillors after it was admitted the Highland Council would be charging more than all but one local authority.
There are two types of charging points – fast so-called journey chargers which works at more than 43kW and slow destination chargers which work at 22kW or less.
So for journey chargers motorists would pay 30p per kWh with a £1 minimum charge while if they overstay charge applied after 45 minutes plus a 15 minute grace period, they will pay £1 per minute after that.
Destination Chargers are lower priced at just 20p per kWh with a £1 minimum charge and no overstay tariff – by comparison other council offered per kWh tariffs ranging from 15p to 25p.
Councillor Carolyn Caddick said: “I completely understand why we would not charge up until now to promote the use of electric vehicles but I do think we need to make it sustainable so I do think it is good to move towards a charging regime.
“So I absolutely think this is the right move and maybe the commercial ventures will start thinking this is a good move to start offering more charging points.
"I am just not sure about the rates.”
The council insists the new fees are needed to help it meet the growing costs of the electricity – with the number of “sessions” at its various charge points rising from 12,868 to 22,399 in the space of just two years.
This meant that, in 2020 alone, the cost of the council’s electricity bill for the charge points was more than £50,000.
And it worries that this could double by the end of 2021 as more and more motorists embrace electric vehicles.
“In the current financial climate, this is a revenue burden the council can little afford to bear,” the report that went before councillors warned.
It added: “Currently, no tariff applies for using Highland Council EV charge points. Therefore, EV users can charge their electric vehicles for free.
“The number of EVs on the roads has doubled in the last year, so the risk in electricity supply will be upwards of those numbers without a tariff in place.
“Providing free charging on the publicly accessible network was a condition of previous grant funding from Transport Scotland to encourage the uptake of EVs in order to support carbon reduction targets and the wider climate change agenda.
“This is no longer the case and, as future funding is uncertain and expected to decrease or cease altogether, the introduction of tariffs is endorsed by Transport Scotland in order to transition local authorities to a more sustainable operational model.”
Under the new charging system, the council is proposing that once electricity and other costs are covered, any left over funds raised will be reinvested back into its electricity charge point network’s infrastructure.
