Transparency data

Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) funding allocation methodology

Updated 7 September 2023

Background

The Department for Transport (DfT) has announced that following the Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Pilot, a further £343 million capital and £37.8 million resource funding will be available over the next 2 financial years through the LEVI Fund.

The LEVI Fund is being allocated to Tier 1 local authorities in England. DfT has developed funding allocations. This funding is dependent on suitable plans being agreed by DfT.

Local authorities will be able to apply for funding up to these allocations. The allocations are derived using an allocation model developed by DfT, which evaluates the degree of need and progress within areas.

LEVI recipients had a short opportunity to raise any questions about their allocation amounts. This closed on 14 April 2023 and there was one response. There are no changes to the allocation amounts as a result of this response. However, the described allocation methodology has been updated to show that the chargepoints per 100,000 of population variable is inversely weighted. Areas with a lower chargepoint density received a higher characteristic score.

Capital funding

This section of the note provides an overview of the allocation model used to derive the capital funding allocations.

Guiding principles

The capital allocation model was developed with 2 guiding principles.

Need

The LEVI Fund is primarily targeted at addressing the need for EV charging in areas with lower levels of residential off-street parking, as EV owners who park on-street will need to rely more heavily on the public charging network. The variables selected to allocate LEVI funding looked to reflect this need.

Progress

Currently, certain local authorities are further ahead in their charging network development than others. The allocation model reflects this aspect to ensure that provision is developed across the country.

The LEVI Fund is available to Tier 1 local authorities (unitary, county council or combined authorities) in England on behalf of all their constituent authorities. In London, capital funding will be delivered through borough partnerships.

In line with this, the capital allocation model allocates funding at the county council level where relevant, and unitary authority level where not.

Unitary authorities also include metropolitan districts, London boroughs, the City of London and the Isles of Scilly.

These allocations are then combined to provide the combined authority allocations. As the funding is to be awarded from the financial year 2023 to 2024 the local authority boundaries effective at the start of that year have been used.

Allocation variables

Four different variables were chosen, in line with the principles outlined above. These allocation variables are:

Public chargepoints per 100,000 of population

This variable accounts for existing levels of charging infrastructure available across the country. It is inversely weighted so areas that have greater levels of charging infrastructure receive a lower value. The data underpinning this variable has been taken from January 2023 DfT chargepoint statistics.

Index of multiple deprivation

The index is a relative measure of the level of deprivation across England. This weights different aspects of an area such as income, employment level and education. The average score for the lower level output super area contained within each local authority has been taken from the Department of Levelling up, Housing and Communities 2019 scoring.

Level of rurality

A 6-fold urban and rural categorical variable is used. The categorisation is based on the proportion of residents within the local authority that are in rural or ‘rural related’ hub towns.

The categorical variable is produced by the Office for National Statistics.

Vehicles without off-street parking

This variable provides an estimation of the total size of the LEVI Fund target population in a local authority. It is created from 2 different data sources. The first contains estimates derived from a property attribute dataset of the level of households without off-street parking in local authorities. These proportions are then applied to the total number of vehicles registered in each local authority.

Allocation methodology

Figure 1 shows how variables were used to produce each local authority score.

It highlights how the first 3 variables presented above are combined equally to generate a characteristic score. The 3 variables were scaled to ensure that their average score was 0.5, allowing for an equal weighting across variables.

The characteristic score is then scaled by estimates of vehicles without off-street parking, in line with primary objective of the fund.

This results in final local authority scores that are used to allocate the available of the LEVI capital funding. These funding allocations are then rounded to the nearest thousand.

Figure 1 - Local authority allocations are calculated by multiplying an estimate of vehicle without parking times by their characteristic score. This score is comprised of the sum of number of charge points per 100,000 population plus, IMD and rurality.

Allocation amounts

See the LEVI Fund allocation amounts for all eligible local authorities for more information.

Capability Fund

The approach taken to allocating the capability funding was different from the wider LEVI. There were 3 major differences to the approach outlined for the LEVI Fund.

Variables

These were selected in the same way as the LEVI Fund, using guiding principles of need and progress. For the capability funding, the number of chargepoints per 100,000 of population variable has been replaced by a measure of the current level of resource dedicated to electric vehicles within the local authority area. It has also been inversely weighted.

Floors and caps

The Capability Fund implemented funding floors for each local authority. This ensured that all areas received sufficient funding to support one dedicated member of staff. These floors were combined with funding caps to ensure no one area would receive a disproportionate amount of funding.

Weightings

In the LEVI Fund, an individual local authority’s score was calculated through a combination of a characteristic score and a scaling factor. Taking account of floors and caps, the individual local authority score was calculated using the weightings outlined in Table 1 below.

	Vehicles without access to off-street parking	Current EV Officer Resource	Index of Multiple Deprivation	Rurality
Weighting	75%	10%	5%	10%

Table 1: Capability Fund variable weighting

Allocation amounts – Capability Fund

You can view the Capability Fund allocation amounts for all eligible local authorities on this GOV.UK page.