Public charge points in Perth & Kinross and Fife: EIR release

Information requested

Details on how many electric vehicle chargers are currently in working order in Perth and Kinross and Fife and also, if there are plans to increase the number available to motorists.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Charge Point Status

For awareness, the Scottish Government does not own or operate any publicly available electric vehicle charge points, and charge points which have historically been funded by Scottish Government are largely owned and operated by local authorities. As a result, Scottish Government does not possess comprehensive data on all public charge points in the Perth & Kinross and Fife areas, however I am able to provide you with information for charge points in these areas which are on the ChargePlace Scotland network. (There are now more than 6,000 publicly available charge points across Scotland, and ChargePlace Scotland accounts for less than half of these  according to data from ZapMap. You may wish to consult websites such as ZapMap and Place to Plug for a broader picture of charge points beyond those on ChargePlace Scotland.)

The answer to your question is that as of 4 November, the status of public charge points in Perth & Kinross and Fife were as follows:

	Local Authority
CP Status	Perth & Kinross	Fife
No Faults	76	101
Transmission Error	15	9
Decommissioned/ Faulted	9	3
Total Public CPs on CPS	100	113
(CPs in Working Order:	91	110)

Please note that a communication error/transmission error isn’t classified/considered a fault, and therefore pending a recognised fault, the uptime is maintained and the charge point still available for use. As a result, charge points with the status 'No Faults' and/or 'Transmission Error' would still be considered in working order.

Should you require anything further, ChargePlace Scotland publishes network performance data on a monthly basis, with downloadable spreadsheets containing information such as fault tickets and uptime information for each month. This information can be accessed via the following link: Network Performance – Charge Place Scotland.

The ChargePlace Scotland mobile app and website also contain a live map, including the ‘availability’ status of charge points. However, please note that a ‘grey pin’ does not necessarily mean ‘not working’. It may be the case that the status of the charger is 'Unknown' due to a ‘transmission error’, i.e. a temporary connectivity issue between the charge point and the CPS operator, often caused by limitations with local mobile network signals which are relied upon to maintain a connection. Connectivity issues do not generally affect the ability of the charge point to dispense power and drivers will still get the charge that they require.

Future Plans

With regard to plans for increasing the number of charge points, the Scottish Government allocated £140k to each of the 32 Scottish local authorities in order to support development of local or regional public EV charging strategies and expansion plans. These strategy and expansion plans are being used to help inform development and delivery of projects under the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund (EVIF), which aims to provide £30 million of public funding to enable at least a further £30 million of private sector investment to continue expansion of public EV charging networks across Scotland. Public funding will be targeted at those areas where private sector investment is currently less viable, including in rural and island communities.

Through EVIF, the Scottish Government is supporting all 32 local authorities, including Perth & Kinross and Fife councils, to enable the local authorities to work with the private sector to increase the number of public EV charge points in their area that are available to motorists, drawing on their strategy and expansion plans. Should you require specific information about future plans for EV infrastructure in these areas, the councils themselves are best placed to deal with such enquires and I would recommend reaching out to them directly.

For awareness, the UK Government publishes public charge point data on a quarterly basis by local authority area and it can be found via the following webpage: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-statistics

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.