Episode 175: Liz Allan and Laura Waldron - Why Fair Access to EV Charging Matters for Local Communities.

Episode 175: Liz Allan and Laura Waldron - Why Fair Access to EV Charging Matters for Local Communities.

Liz Allan speaks to Laura Waldron, Programme Manager for Climate Change at Newport City Council to discuss what it really takes to deliver inclusive, practical EV charging at a local authority level.

Laura shares how Newport is approaching EV infrastructure through a climate change lens, rather than a traditional highways or transport model, and why that shift matters. From rolling out over 130 lamp column chargers to tackling equity for residents without driveways, this conversation explores the realities behind the strategy.

Liz and Laura discuss funding challenges, resident engagement, myths around EV charging costs, and the importance of not waiting for perfect conditions before taking action. 

Laura Waldron Bio:
Laura Waldron is the Programme Manager for Climate Change at Newport City Council, where she leads on EV charging infrastructure alongside wider decarbonisation, engagement and sustainable procurement programmes. With a background in project and process management, Laura brings a pragmatic, delivery focused approach to climate action in local government. She is particularly passionate about equity, accessibility and ensuring that the transition to electric vehicles works for residents without off street parking as well as those who already have access to home charging.

Quote of the Episode:
“If people don’t have a realistic, affordable way to charge near their home, they probably won’t switch to an electric vehicle. Infrastructure has to come first.”  — Laura Waldron

Laura Waldron Links:
Website: https://www.newport.gov.uk/roads-and-travel/parking/electric-vehicle-charge-points
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-waldron-a056637?

Transcript

Liz Allan [00:00:02]:
Hello and welcome back to Electric Evolution. And this week I have with me Laura Waldron. She is the programme manager for climate change at Newport City Council. And Laura and I met a few weeks ago at a CENEX event in Newport. So thanks for joining me. It was lovely to meet you then, and it's nice to see you again.

Laura Waldron [00:00:23]:
Yes, likewise.

Liz Allan [00:00:26]:
So, right, let's. Let's talk about the reasons why you were. Well, reasons why you were at the, at the meeting really, just to start off with, because you were one of the speakers, weren't you, kind of quite earlier on, early on, talking about ev. EV infrastructure. So if we talk about that very, very quickly. But then I'll go into like a, we'll talk and talk about your, your background. Just, just give us a little. Because just give them a taster of why you were there.

Laura Waldron [00:00:55]:
Yes. So we were presenting with Urban Fox, one of the charge point operators we work with, on a charging solution involving lighting columns. So we're always keen to try different technologies in the EV space. You know, we don't know what the landscape is going to look like in, say, 5, 10 years' time. So we don't kind of want to put all our eggs in one basket, technology-wise. So we're always keen to try different solutions. And the, the lighting column solution was one that was of real interest to us for a number of reasons. And we've been able to roll out, you know, it's quite a large-scale trial.

Laura Waldron [00:01:33]:
I think we kind of decided to really go for it with this one. We were able to secure funding from the UK government to install 130 lighting column chargers.

Liz Allan [00:01:43]:
Oh, wow, that's not a bad number.

Laura Waldron [00:01:46]:
No, no, absolutely. So we were presenting with Urban Fox on that project, how it came about, how we procured it, some of the challenges that we'd had and ultimately, you know, how the delivery had been managed. So, yeah, that was a really interesting project for us to talk about. We were the first local authority in Wales to do that solution. It's been done in a few local authorities in England. We were the first in Wales, which is always nice.

Liz Allan [00:02:12]:
So let's come back to that in a minute, but let's talk about you now. And, I was kind of saying to you that it's always interesting looking through Somebody's kind of LinkedIn profile to have a look at the things that you've done before, the role that you're in now. It always fascinates me. And you've done quite a few different things. Because you're not originally from Wales. We were just talking about that, weren't we? So, just let's kind of go through a little bit of your background and actually what brought you to Wales, as well as part of that background.

Laura Waldron [00:02:46]:
Yeah, so, but both geographically and kind of career-wise, I've been all over the place. So geographically gone from Leicestershire down to the University of Warwick, lived in Coventry for a few years, then to Hertfordshire and then about 10 years ago to Wales and then career-wise, most of my background is in sort of project support, project management, process management. And then, four years ago, I joined the Newport City Council in the policy and partnership team. So that's working with the Well-being of Future Generations Act, kind of encouraging partnership working across the public sector, third sector, and private sector. So as part of that, I was involved in sustainable travel, and that, along with an interest from an activism side of things, was what really brought me into climate change in the public sector. And then I was fortunate that there was a vacancy in the climate change team for a program manager. So I've been in that role for three years now, and EV charging is a big part of that role at the moment, and there's a lot of other stuff that's kind of involved in that position. But I think we're quite unique, certainly amongst all the local authorities I've spoken to, that EV charging sits within the climate change team rather than highways or infrastructure, or kind of a more traditional area.

Laura Waldron [00:04:14]:
And I think there are definite advantages and a few disadvantages to that. But I think there are definite advantages to having that within climate change in terms of the push that we've got because we don't always know what's feasible and what isn't. We're very much approaching it from the perspective of, okay, highways. Tell us why we can't install this technology in this location, rather than sort of looking at it and going oh no, no, we can't do that. We're very much approaching it from a perspective of, okay, tell us why we can't do it.

Liz Allan [00:04:48]:
I was going to say, because we were talking about this before, weren't we? Before we started recording that. There are so many councils across the UK that have these job roles, especially for EV infrastructure, in very, very different teams. So it's kind of, you'll see like, like you said about your title, being part of the climate change team and others being part of Highways and Others being part of, you know, so many.

Laura Waldron [00:05:20]:
Different parts of a council are an absolute minefield. And, you know, within EV charging within climate change, you know, there are so many different ways of kind of cutting the cake in terms of, you know, how councils organise their service areas, you know, what responsibilities fall into different areas, and, you know, kind of different job roles. So, yeah, it's, it's, it can be a bit of a challenge sometimes trying to find the right person to talk to about specific issues. You know, even within Newport Council, you know, I'm often kind of looking through the org chart thinking, well, hang on. So I know this is the rough area I'm in, and I'm just clicking through people's job roles, looking for a job title that sounds about right. And then just reaching out on Teams to find out who we need to speak to.

Liz Allan [00:06:04]:
I was going to say, because it doesn't really, you know, so even for your title, it doesn't kind of say what you do on the tin. But then it'd probably be a really long title, wouldn't it, really?

Laura Waldron [00:06:14]:
Yes, that's the amazing thing about working within climate change, but also the challenge, is that it covers such a broad range of areas. I mean, there are, there are very few service areas within the council that we don't have some kind of involvement with that we've not done projects with in the past or supported with, you know, procurement activity or, you know, kind of done engagement events with or, you know, there's, there's always some kind of relevance to climate change within pretty much everything the council does. So, which is great, but sometimes you do have to be a bit sort of disciplined and think, right, okay, we're a relatively small team. There are only so many hours in the day. You know, we need to focus on the things that really matter and deliver the most benefits.

Liz Allan [00:07:01]:
So, how do you break that down? Because that's quite difficult, isn't it? I mean, so, so what other areas besides the, besides EV charging, are you looking at as a, you know, kind of as a team?

Laura Waldron [00:07:14]:
Yeah, so. So we're very lucky. We've got a couple of really good strategies that guide the activity we're doing from both an internal and an external perspective. So we've got the Newport City Council organisational climate change plan, which identifies the key areas we need to decarbonise as a local authority by 2030. So obviously, buildings are a big one. Fleet procurement activity, which is part of our wider role in the city, waste emissions and then land use. And then we've got an overarching area looking at organisational culture and leadership. So that's kind of how we embed awareness of climate change and comms and engagement work across the local authority.

Laura Waldron [00:08:00]:
So that kind of guides the areas that we're sort of involved in, sort of from an internal perspective. And specifically within my team, we do a lot of work on sustainable procurement. So, looking at particularly the larger contracts that we procure for and how we can tender for those in a way that kind of encourages suppliers to think about their emissions and think about how they're going to deliver those contracts in a way that minimises kind of carbon emissions and maximises the positive impacts for climate change. And then the other key area we look at is the comms and engagement piece. So we have a really extensive comms and engagement strategy that covers, internally within the council, raising awareness of what we do and how other people can contribute to it. We're really lucky. We've got a fantastic active climate change staff network that has representation across pretty much all the different cities' service areas. And they do some really lovely projects around, kind of, particularly at the moment, their focus is on the circular economy, so minimising waste.

Laura Waldron [00:09:08]:
So we've got a Christmas jumper swap that's live at the moment.

Liz Allan [00:09:11]:
Oh, cool.

Laura Waldron [00:09:14]:
Sort of small electrical collections, kind of. They've done like orchard planting, all that kind of thing. And we've done visits to local housing developers that are putting in really interesting technologies in housing, like ground-source heat pumps and all that sort of thing. So, yeah, that's really interesting. And then we do a lot of work with our elected members and members of the public. So we've run some events recently. A particular highlight from a couple of months ago was EcoFest in Newport. So that was a big event at the Riverfront Theatre right in the city centre.

Laura Waldron [00:09:50]:
We had loads of representation from different charities, local businesses, and other organisations that are kind of in that climate change space. It was just a really fantastic opportunity to get everybody in one place, talk about the work they're doing, and evangelise about it to the public, maybe bust a few myths as well. So that was A fantastic event, really, really well attended. And, you know, it's a really important area for us to kind of raise, raise, not so much raise awareness of climate change, but to talk to people about kind of what they can do and how they can get involved. I think there can sometimes be a lot of sort of doom and gloom around climate change, and a lot of people think, oh, well, you know, what can I do as an individual? And I think there is a lot of stuff that people can do. And talking to people about, you know, the organisations they can get involved with, the changes they can make, I think, is a really powerful message. And then, from a wider city perspective, we've got the local area energy plan, which talks about all the different areas we need to decarbonise across the city. So that includes things like electric vehicle infrastructure, working with industrial partners, you know, housing retrofit, grid decarbonisation, all this kind of stuff.

Laura Waldron [00:11:14]:
And within my team, we have a particular focus on the domestic retrofit side of things. So we support local people with sort of information, grant funding, and advice about how they can sort of not just decarbonise their homes. But obviously, there's a sort of cost-saving element there as well. And that's something we found is quite powerful, is kind of talking, you know, you mentioned climate change to people, and some people sort of go, oh. And they're sort of a bit skeptical and they think, well, that's not something I'm interested in. But when you talk to people about, well, okay, actually, you know, these are the things you can do in your house to save money, and at the same time, you're actually saving carbon as well. And it's having all these environmental benefits.

Laura Waldron [00:11:56]:
But those kinds of conversations around sort of energy saving and the cost of living, cost crisis, and things like that are quite good gateway conversations into then talking to people about those wider environmental issues.

Liz Allan [00:12:09]:
It's funny, isn't it? As you say, people have got these thoughts, or, you know, certain people have thoughts on climate change. And it feels sometimes. And I've said to you, and people don't know who is watching and listening about what my husband does as a climate professor of climate science, you know, it feels untouchable sometimes, doesn't it? But it's because actually in the, if you look at the massive, the big picture of it all, the world view, then it does feel like, oh, my God, look at this. But actually, if you drill it right down to kind of like the nuts and bolts and make it feel that, you know, that your residents, for example, can do something about this. Yeah, it just, you know, and, and actually saving money. It's, it's funny. My, our next door neighbour, bless her, she's. They've got solar panels and battery storage, and we, by accident, I heard, I heard a weird beeping noise outside, outside our house, like last night.

Liz Allan [00:13:22]:
Not last night, last week at some ridiculous hour. And we've got a close chat, so we live on a close message, and I said, "I've just heard some beeping," just to point it out to everybody. Anyway, it was there, it was their battery, it was next door neighbor's battery storage and we just got talking kind of on, on teams and it was, it was her daughter who's in her 30s as well, and there were certain things that they didn't even know about what they could do with their battery, about overnight rates and saving money by having an overnight rate and, and kind of exporting back to the grid and things like that, you know, and it's.

Laura Waldron [00:14:01]:
Just, it's a very complex area, and you know, that's a lot of what we try to do is just to kind of get that information out there to people to say, look, you know, these, these are your options, and you know, this is who you can talk to about it. And you know, here's some information just to kind of, you know, raise awareness of it and kind of show people that it's not, it's not as complicated maybe as people thought it was, and you know, talking about the benefits of it, and you know, the cost saving. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a fascinating area.

Liz Allan [00:14:31]:
And like I say, I bet you're really busy all the time because you've got loads to do, haven't you? Goodness me. But I mean, all of the stuff that you're doing there is fantastic. So, so yeah, congratulations on pushing everything forward. Let's, let's move on to the charging side of things so that we can kind of talk about, you know, the, the involvement and how you're, you're moving that side. I mean, there's so many things, Laura, that we've just, you've just talked about there that I would love to talk about in detail anyway, but let's just kind of move on to the what we, you know, the things that you're doing because you're really concentrating on the charging side of things, haven't you? Aren't you? You know, but you've had EV charging because that's one of the things about decarbonisation, isn't it? You know, it's not, it's not the, it's not everything, you know, because you've just told us all the things you're doing. But this is still important because the stats on transport and reducing transport emissions and air pollution.

Laura Waldron [00:15:40]:
Yeah. So, from a citywide perspective, transport accounts for by far the largest share of our carbon emissions. And like you say, there's an air quality issue as well. You know, Newport has a number of air quality management areas, and, obviously, transport is the major contributing factor to all of them. So, you know, doing what we can to achieve decarbonised transport is absolutely vital.

Liz Allan [00:16:04]:
I was going to say. So just talking about that, about the, you know, if you, if you kind of. I'm not saying remove the climate change aspect as such, but looking at that air pollution side of things, how are you finding engagement with businesses and residents regarding air pollution? Are they, are they kind of recognising the importance of that? 

Laura Waldron [00:16:30]:
Absolutely.

Liz Allan [00:16:31]:
It's funny, isn't it, because people, as I say again, look at climate change reducing, reducing, reducing your carbon footprint and air pollution are two separate things. And kind of, yeah, they're, they're so. Especially when we're looking at transport, those are interconnected, aren't they?

Laura Waldron [00:16:47]:
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, it's one of those things I've, you know, my husband and I were talking about this and it's like, you know, almost if, even if you don't believe in climate change, if you think the whole thing is a hoax and, you know, it's complete nonsense, you would, why would you still not want to move to electric vehicles to reduce air pollution and noise pollution? Why would you not want to move to renewables to reduce our dependence on, you know, Russian gas? And, you know, there's so many kind of, you know, use a sort of a slightly projecty term, co benefits to kind of dealing with climate change that, you know, even if you, you ignore the climate change side of it completely, it's still worthwhile doing all of these other things because you get so many other benefits to doing it.

Liz Allan [00:17:35]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is why we can't just keep. We've got to talk about it as a whole. Not as a whole, but, but kind of making it easy for people to understand, you know, And I'm not trying to say that everybody's thick. I'm really not. I'm just saying that, you know, that actually it can be that the way it comes across sometimes it can be really divisive.

Laura Waldron [00:18:01]:
And absolutely, absolutely.

Liz Allan [00:18:02]:
In the way, we're polarising people in some ways because of it.

Laura Waldron [00:18:07]:
It's about kind of meeting people where they are and finding the thing that's of interest to them, and that, you know, that could be air pollution, that could be, you know, saving money on their energy bills, that could be. Be, you know, their. Their local park and green spaces. You know, there are so many different avenues that you can kind of go through to talk to people rather than kind of approaching them with, you know, this big looming like climate change and kind of, you know, almost scaring them off before you've even started.

Liz Allan [00:18:34]:
Yeah. Because it is two scary words. It's just two words, and it's. And it scares a lot of people, doesn't it?

Laura Waldron [00:18:40]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:18:41]:
You know, and people don't know what to do with it. They just don't. They don't know what to do with it. But like you say, breaking it down to those. That kind of. Those parts that make sense.

Laura Waldron [00:18:54]:
Yeah.

Laura Waldron [00:18:57]:
Yeah. I think that's where the infrastructure is really important because it's something people can see and change. You know, moving to an electric vehicle, that really helps them feel like they're making a difference.

Liz Allan [00:19:13]:
And is that the kind of. When you're doing your comms and engagement pieces, are you? Are you getting more positive feedback from? From residents? Are they still a little bit, like, not sure about this?

Laura Waldron [00:19:29]:
You've still got your sceptics, and I think it's. It's really interesting. So I was at an event a couple of weeks ago, and there was a presentation on driver attitudes toward electric vehicles and on big surveys that have been conducted. And they were saying that from, you know, from the research they'd done, you've got about a third of people who are just EV sceptics. And then you've got kind of 5% of the people they surveyed were already EV owners. And then of the remaining kind of percentage, it was split roughly 50- 50 between people who were kind of actively looking at EV adoption, maybe within the next 12 months, and then people who were kind of interested but maybe a little bit more sceptical or looking in the longer term. I think it's interesting for us because whenever we put any content out on social media about the EV projects, we're doing the reaction is almost overwhelmingly negative. And so I think we, we were probably guilty of kind of putting too much of our focus on comms and engagement on those people and trying to convince the skeptics.

Laura Waldron [00:20:27]:
Whereas actually seeing that data that showed that actually they are only a third of people and it's not that we, you know, we want to ignore them completely, but actually we'd probably get far more impact on having more of a campaign that focused on, you know, the third of people that were kind of, you know, thinking about getting an ev but maybe just needed that little push and kind of presenting it in a more positive way and talking about, you know, not so much the benefits but all, you know, all the infrastructure that we're putting in and how easy that's going to make charging and you know, the kind of the cost difference between the sort of the lighting column charges that we're putting in and like the rapid charger charges. Because I think there's a, you know, there's a huge amount of myths out there around EV charging. You know, people think all EV chargers cost the same. They're all kind of, you know, 65, 75, 85 pence per kilowatt hour, and you know, a lot of myths around kind of safety and fires and all that kind of thing. So. And it's hard because, obviously, we only have quite a limited reach from a comms and engagement perspective. But yeah, no, it's definitely something that we're putting a focus on sort of this year and you know, have done kind of in the recent past as well is kind of talking more about the projects that we're doing and the impact that that's going to have and kind of how that's helping people to kind of make that switch over to an electric vehicle.

Liz Allan [00:21:51]:
So when did you first start putting chargers in Newport, in the city?

Laura Waldron [00:22:00]:
So I think our first charges started going in about six or seven years ago, and it was quite a small-scale thing. It was kind of, you know, very much focusing on sort of council-owned car parks, maybe just putting in like, you know, a fast charger, a 22 kilowatt charger in a car park, you know, a couple of marked bays and just kind of, you know, working our way through our estate like that. And then when I joined the team, well, about nearly three years ago now, I think we had about probably about 20 on-street charges and maybe about sort of, you know, 40 or 50 kind of car park or destination charges. And then over the last few years. So firstly, the first sort of year or two, the focus was very much on getting our estate kind of finished, you know, getting, you know, we've been very lucky. We've, you know, been the recipient of some very generous funding from the Welsh government, and you know, some, some of the sources as well. And that's allowed us to kind of almost finish off the, the sort of the car park and estate side of things. So all of our car parks in Newport now have charging.

Laura Waldron [00:23:10]:
A lot of that charging is kind of future-proofed for the next few years. So we're not going to have to go in and put more charges in. And then the main focus over the last year, kind of 18 months, has been around on-street charging because that was an area we identified. Firstly, you know, it was something that we as a local authority had to get involved in because from a kind of commercial perspective those sorts of on-street charges are not necessarily attractive to CPOs on their own. You know, you're not necessarily going to get a CPO coming in and just offering to pay for all of the kit and the installation themselves. So it's something where we need to kind of give a little push. And it's also hugely important. Important from a kind of an equity perspective.

Laura Waldron [00:23:58]:
You know, if you're a resident that's got a driveway, you know, not saying it's you know, a sort of a cheap option, but the kind of the, almost like the business case, the commercials around kind of deciding to move to an ev, you know, you get a charger installed, you get one of these, you know, like you're saying the cheap overnight tariffs and actual, usually, you know, that's quite an easy case to make. Whereas if you're a house that doesn't have a driveway, you know, before we started putting these on street installs in, your only real choices were going to your nearest, you know, supermarket, petrol station or council-owned car park and parking up there. And you know that's, that's not convenient for people. You know, it's not reasonably priced for people. And you know, we've got 22,000 households in Newport that don't have access to off-street parking. And you know, most, but not, you know, not necessarily all, but most of those are in areas of kind of, you know, lower socioeconomic status as well. And so, you know, you just, you've, you know, if you don't intervene, you've potentially got this situation where you're saying to a Certain group of people, you know. Oh, yeah.

Laura Waldron [00:25:11]:
You know, you live in a, you know, nice big house with a driveway, so you get access to cheap parking or cheap charging. But you people who, you know, don't have a driveway, you're stuck basically, you know, you're stuck with inconvenient charging, much more expensive. And yeah, sorry, we're not going to make it easy.

Liz Allan [00:25:32]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a bit like saying we're not going to make it easy for you.

Laura Waldron [00:25:35]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:25:36]:
So therefore. Yeah, but you don't want that. You want to make it as easy as possible.

Laura Waldron [00:25:40]:
Because going back to your comment about the sort of, the feedback we've been getting, the comments we've been getting. Yes, I think we probably originally got more negative comments from people. You know, the classic one was, why are you spending money on EV charging when there are potholes everywhere? You should be fixing potholes. And obviously, those funding pots are completely separate. It's not like we could say, oh, well, you know, we were given money for EV charging, but we decided not to spend it on that and spend it on potholes instead.

Liz Allan [00:26:08]:
Yeah, that would go down well, wouldn't it?

Laura Waldron [00:26:10]:
Yeah. But what we found is that, particularly over the last sort of six to nine months, as these projects have come on board with the on-street charging and have become more visible, we're now getting far more people emailing us saying, I've got an electric vehicle or I want to buy an electric vehicle. You know, you've installed charging on a street near me, but I'd like it on my street. So, can you look at surveying my street and find out if you can install a charger there? Which is brilliant. And you know, we had a really lovely email come in a couple of weeks ago from a lady saying that she was an EV user and the charging sort of infrastructure that we put in on her street meant that she was saving huge amounts of money because previously she was having to go, go to a nearby petrol station and charge up there and, you know, spend a lot of money on rapid charging. Whereas the infrastructure we put in was much more convenient for her and much cheaper. And she was just saying, you know, thank you. It means a, it's a huge difference to me, which is lovely.

Liz Allan [00:27:15]:
And that, and that is the kind of thing that makes a difference, isn't it? When you, when you read that and you know that actually you've made a difference to somebody's kind of life and their pocket as well, because that's, that's so Important, isn't it? But let's. So, what are the different types of solutions that you're looking at or you're working with at the moment? So you said earlier, didn't you, right at the beginning, you're working with Urban Fox on lamp post charging. And you've got, do you say 100, 130 that have gone in or are going in?

Laura Waldron [00:27:54]:
130 have gone in. And then doing the next phase of surveys, looking at, doing some more installs this year. And that includes a huge number of resident requests that we've had in, I think it's about 30 or 40 streets we're surveying that have come about as a direct result of a resident emailing us and saying, " Can you put a charger on my street?

Liz Allan [00:28:18]:
Because that's funny, isn't it? Because it. Not everybody realises that you can use a lamppost for a charger as well. You know.

Laura Waldron [00:28:30]:
For, for a while we thought that we wouldn't be able to use that technology because most of our columns are at the back of the pavement, right? And we were aware of the kind of backpack-style chargers that go directly onto the column. But we thought that wouldn't work for us because. Because most of our columns are on the back of the pavement. And then we became aware of a couple of local authorities in England who'd been using this different way of doing it. So essentially, you're using the lighting column as a feeder pillar and then running the cable to a socket at the front of the pavement and then having a slimline bollard at the front of the pavement. The big advantage? Well, a couple of major advantages for us. Firstly, it's a lot cheaper to install and a lot quicker to install compared to the standard kind of feeder pillar lead or fed chargers. But also because you're using an existing supply and just having a virtual meter instead of a physical meter, there are no separate standing charges.

Laura Waldron [00:29:32]:
So obviously, from an on-street perspective, the standing charge issue affects all charging infrastructure. And I'm sure you've had plenty of guests in the past who have talked about that issue. But particularly for on-street charging, it's a real issue because the utilisation for those charges at the moment obviously isn't massive. We're expecting it to increase as the years go on. But at the moment, you're not necessarily getting huge levels of utilisation. So having those standing charges, you know, day in, day out, regardless of usage, ultimately that's just pushing up the price to the end user. So by utilising this solution, we've been able to offer you, as cheaply as we can, to local residents. And obviously, we're not in a position where we're competing with the kind of, you know, 7, 8 pence per kilowatt hour overnight tariffs that people are able to access.

Laura Waldron [00:30:26]:
But we're at least starting to get to kind of rough parity with a standard tariff. And crucially, we're below that 42 pence per kilowatt hour kind of break-even rate, where if you're paying less than that on average, you're saving compared to having a petrol car. So that we're able to offer this charging infrastructure significantly below that rate is a real plus for us, and we hope that will make the infrastructure attractive to use for residents.

Liz Allan [00:30:59]:
So what's, what is the. If you're allowed to tell me, but I can probably check, can't I? If not, what, what kind of prices are we looking at for those then?

Laura Waldron [00:31:08]:
So, for the lighting column charges, it's 30 pence per kilowatt-hour overnight.

Liz Allan [00:31:15]:
Yeah, that's really good. Yeah.

Laura Waldron [00:31:17]:
Okay. As you say, when you compare that to the prices that you're being charged for, you know, commercial charges in supermarkets, in petrol stations, which can be, as we said, kind of 65, 75 plus pence per kilowatt hour, we think that's a really attractive option for people.

Liz Allan [00:31:37]:
That is, that is good. And what, what power is, is on.

Laura Waldron [00:31:42]:
You know, they're low-rated, so they're kind of, they're 3.6 kilowatt charges. So they are, they are designed, designed for slow overnight charging, which actually is an advantage because one concern that we get raised from residents is you're putting charges on my street, and that's going to mean people are going to be driving here to use the charger and taking up parking space,s and there's already not enough parking. But we say to people, we're installing these across the city, and they are low-rated chargers. These, these aren't going to be the sort of things that people are going to come and park up and use for an hour or two. These are designed for residents to use on their own streets either during the day or overnight. And yeah, we're not, we're not putting in, you know, it's not like we're putting a rapid charger in that people are going to be travelling from sort of miles around to use. This is infrastructure that is very much designed for the use of local residents or people.

Liz Allan [00:32:47]:
I mean, it is possible, isn't it, that you'll have people who will be working locally or somewhere like that.

Laura Waldron [00:32:54]:
Visitors or things like that. But yeah, yeah, we don't, we've certainly, we've not had any reports from people saying that having this charging infrastructure on their street is a, such suddenly led to, you know, massive increases in the numbers of people parking there. So.

Liz Allan [00:33:14]:
So, let's talk about some of the other solutions you've got. So you've got your, you've got your urban fox, you've got your, so your lamppost column with the, with the pillar at the front or the, but you're calling it a bollard, aren't you? It's a bollard charger at the front. So what, what else are you actually? Because you're, you are really multitasking at the moment, aren't you? Bringing different solutions in, including cross pavement. But what, what others have you got?

Laura Waldron [00:33:42]:
So we're also continuing with the rollout of those, those standard charges. So again, we know it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, and we know that the market is still quite new in this area. So like I said earlier, we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. So alongside these kinds of column chargers, where we're not restricting parking, we are also putting in a number of those standard chargers. You know, those 22-kilowatt twin-feeder pillar-fed chargers and those do have marked bays, but we always make sure that when we're putting those in, obviously, we want to put them in the residential areas where they're going to be used, but we make sure that those are never in front of people's houses. You know, we wouldn't never want to restrict the parking in front of a particular person's house because you know, that's, that's a can of worms that we're just not interested in opening up.

Liz Allan [00:34:34]:
No, and that's a massive. That'd probably be consultations and all sorts of stuff, wouldn't it?

Laura Waldron [00:34:39]:
Yeah. So it'll be interesting for us to see. Obviously, historically, the majority of our charges have been, you know, these marked bays. Restricted use for EVs only. Going to be fascinated to see over the next few years how the utilisation kind of pans out between those and the lighting column chargers. You know, how much of a difference is having that kind of restricted access to the bay going to make? And then the other solutions that we're looking at, so Trojan is one that we're installing this year, which is the sort of the sockets or multiple sockets along a street fed from a Single feeder pillar. And the really lovely thing about that solution and why it's really useful for us, is that there's no permanent kind of charging infrastructure there. So it's not like a bollard that's there all the time.

Laura Waldron [00:35:34]:
It's essentially a portable charger people carry around. And when they want to charge up, they park alongside a socket, they plug their charger in, they connect up to their car and away they go. Why that's really important for us is obviously in common with a lot of other urban authorities. We have a lot of areas that have very narrow pavements.

Liz Allan [00:35:53]:
Yeah.

Laura Waldron [00:35:53]:
And accessibility is something that we're obviously very cognizant of. So we always make sure that we allow, as an absolute minimum 1.2 meters of access between the charger and the back of the pavement to allow for wheelchair access and push and all that kind of thing. But we also have to work within restrictions from our highways team, where we can't situate infrastructure too close to the curb edge in order to minimise the risk of somebody mounting the curb and hitting something, especially something that's electrically live. Now, where Trojan comes into its own is that because that's not a permanent piece of infrastructure, we've been able to make the argument with our highways team that, at the point where someone is charging, and there's something in the ground, there's a car parked alongside it. So obviously, it's not completely eliminating the risk of somebody hitting it, but it's very much minimising it. So they've agreed that, certainly, on a trial basis, we can install the infrastructure, the sockets, a little bit closer to the curb edge. And actually, that really, really opens up quite a lot of areas that we wouldn't have been able to look at previously. It allows us to actually install EV infrastructure in those areas.

Laura Waldron [00:37:11]:
So as I said, it's about looking at what's the right solution for the right area. And that obviously takes into account things like pavement width, it takes into account the road width, the type of road. Can you put a build-out in the road? What's the parking lot situation? You know, are people curb parking or pavement parking, you know, what sort of housing is it? So there's all there is. And, you know, that's before we even get into stuff like the availability of electrical connections and things like that. So there's, you know, a lot of things to consider. And then, as you say, we're also looking at cross pavement solutions. So we've had a trial going on with Kerbo Charge for about the last year now, just a very small trial. We've had eight installations, and that is something that we are, you know, we have a lot of interest in.

Laura Waldron [00:37:59]:
We've got a waiting list of probably about 80 people who have said they're interested in having it installed. But obviously, as you can appreciate, there are a lot of things to consider with something like that. So, from our perspective, from an internal perspective, kind of managing the legal life, you know, what happens if somebody tripped or slipped over the channel or if someone hadn't put their cable in properly, how do we make sure that we're inspecting them properly? And then there's a big issue that unfortunately we can't resolve ourselves, which we're sort of, hopefully sort of getting the Welsh government to intervene on, is an issue around reinstatement for statutory undertakers. So. So this is a very frustrating situation where the guidance for HAWK was updated last year in England to include these cross-pavement solutions in the list of street furniture that would have to be reinstated by a statutory undertaker if they damaged it. So in the same way that if a statutory undertaker damages, you know, a lighting column or something, they would have to pay to reinstate that. Unfortunately, the English guidance was updated to include cross-pavement solutions in that list.

Laura Waldron [00:39:16]:
It wasn't updated in Wales. So we're in a situation now where if we were to put in, you know, dozens, you know, potentially even hundreds of installs across the city right now, a statutory undertaker could come along, dig up the pavement damage, all the channels, and they would have any liability to put them back. So that would either have to be the homeowner or us having to pay to reinstall those channels, which isn't obviously a situation that we can sort of go ahead with. So we are. We are working on it. We are trying to develop a solution for that.

Liz Allan [00:39:51]:
Do me a favour, just explain what I kind of. I think I get what you're talking about, but just. Just to kind of break it down, what? What would you class as? What is a statutory undertaker? Is that somebody who has the ability to have permission to dig something up?

Laura Waldron [00:40:10]:
Yes. So it's. It's people like, you know, the utilities companies, you know, British Gas, electric companies that can basically come along and they have permission to access the highway and the pavement in order to be able to. To manage installations.

Liz Allan [00:40:28]:
Oh, my goodness. So. So that. Yeah, so I suppose that's it. Throw. Puts a cat a few cats amongst pigeons, doesn't it? When you've got changes like that. Yeah, so. Yeah, yeah.

Liz Allan [00:40:40]:
Because you do find sometimes that, especially, you know, you're talking about being separate from the highways.

Laura Waldron [00:40:48]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:40:49]:
People. So if you have got things being dug up that you don't know, you know, I've seen it down, you know, in Reading, where we live, that you'll, you'll have the road, you'll have a road that's been kind of tarmac, new tarmac and then you'll have a utility company coming, digging it, digging up.

Laura Waldron [00:41:08]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:41:08]:
Because there's just this. It's one of those cases of a lack of communication, isn't it, really? Or maybe just kind of the order of things coming up.

Laura Waldron [00:41:17]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And. And just to say as well, you know, just to give a shout out to our Highways team, because they're brilliant and we wouldn't be able to do all of the work we do, particularly all of the on-street developments, without them. Obviously, they're the guys that are the experts in, you know, kind of accessibility and safety. They're the ones that, you know, sign off on the location, sign off on the, the designs, you know, sign off on Section 50 agreements, all that kind of thing. So, yeah, we, we obviously do a lot of work with our Highways team, and we're very grateful for the time that they give us because, you know, it's not, it's not our area of expertise. No.

Liz Allan [00:41:55]:
And it's not always. Yeah, it's not always there. It's not always their issue anyway, is it? You know, to me, and it just depends on. On multiple factors coming, coming through. So. So, yeah, and I know lots of you, as you've come of said earlier, and lots of other local authorities I've talked to, you're juggling lots and lots of different things all in, all in one go. So. Absolutely not always.

Liz Allan [00:42:18]:
It's not always that. That easy, is it? So if we. So you've got. You've talked about the different providers. You've also. Because you are also bringing in other organisations into the EV infrastructure besides. So you've got your Kerber Charge, you've got Urban Fox, you've talked about Trojan.

Laura Waldron [00:42:40]:
Yeah, see, I mean, the other CPOs that we're working with, so Zest are managing the rollout of our kind of standard infrastructure. And then we've also got some installs with connected Curb, which is a contract that's managed regionally, so they're installing in different areas across South Wales. But that's not a contract that we manage; that's a contract managed through an organisation called Cardiff Capital. Region, and then we've got our existing network, which partly I inherited, and partly we've sort of been using that contract for the last few years for a lot of the car park-based infrastructure and a few on-street sites, which is currently with a company called Silverstone. But that contract is, is ending this year. So we're going out to tender, sort of just getting all the paperwork together at the moment, which, as you can imagine, is quite a big job. We're going out to tender in the next few months to look at potentially a new provider for that area. So that's going to be an interesting one for us because, because of the, how new a lot of this infrastructure is across local authorities and the fact that most concession agreements tend to be very long because of the fact that the payback period is, is quite lengthy.

Laura Waldron [00:44:02]:
The, the Silverstone contract, because that was done sort of fairly early days, was actually quite a short contract. So there aren't many other local authorities that have gone out to re-tender for existing infrastructure. So that's going to be an interesting one for us because we don't know, we're hoping very much hoping that you know, a CPO will come along and adopt the infrastructure that's already there. But obviously, there is the possibility that, particularly for some of the older chargers, they might want to replace the chargers with their own units just to, you know, minimise their maintenance liability, you know, make sure that they're working on with equipment that they're familiar with. So obviously with my climate change hat on and with my circular economy hat on, we're very keen to make sure that the stuff that we've put in the ground, ideally we can carry on using it or if not that either we or the CPO have processes in place where we can make sure that that equipment is either recycled or reused at other locations. We don't want to, to end up with loads of equipment that's just sitting in a warehouse somewhere and not being used, so.

Liz Allan [00:45:16]:
Exactly, exactly. You've got, you've got so many things going on. It's just, yeah, it's, it's a lot.

Laura Waldron [00:45:25]:
To manage and it's a lot of contract management. But for us, the big advantage is that having all of that competition means that we're not just behind Holden to one CPO, who, you know, could potentially. I'm not saying they would necessarily, but you know, there's always that risk that if they're the only game in town, then they can just put up their prices because there's no competition. So the hope is that having that, that competition and that sort of mini market almost within the city will help to drive down costs, and obviously that's to the benefit of residents, visitors and everybody.

Liz Allan [00:46:03]:
So, I've got a couple of final questions for you. First one is what's your biggest lesson learned from all of this so far? Is there one? There's probably gonna be multiple, but is there one?

Laura Waldron [00:46:22]:
I suppose the biggest one, and it's probably an obvious one, is everything takes longer than you think it going to and you know, it's a real challenge for us trying to deliver this infrastructure within the constraints of kind of single year funding which, you know, most of the work we're doing is grant funded either by Welsh government or UK government and it's always done on a 12 month funding cycle. So you know, the, everything takes longer than you think it's going to. Even the stuff that, on paper, looks really simple. And yeah, I think the other big lesson is probably around just not being afraid to try something. You know, we're, we're very lucky within my team, you know, my, my manager, our senior leadership, you know, our sort of cabinet member, they're all really supportive of, you know, the EV team side of things but you know, climate change more generally and I've never felt like I have to kind of be terrified of failure. You know, there's very much a culture within the organization of sort of give something a go and if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't and just sort of, you know, not being afraid to try something and not being afraid to kind of, you know, stick your neck out and try a new solution or kind of go with a different CPO or sort of, you know, stick something in the ground and see how it's used basically. So yeah, just don't be afraid of trying something new.

Liz Allan [00:48:00]:
Brilliant. And the final question is, so what do you see? What would you like the future to look like for Newport City Council? And that can be across everything because I mean, you know, you're doing so many other things. We could talk about all of the other climate change stuff we're talking about for a whole other episode, but what would you like to see in the next kind of five years?

Laura Waldron [00:48:25]:
So I think from an EV side of things, our aim is that every street in Newport where people don't have off street parking has some form of, you know, ideally public charging infrastructure or some form of solution that allows people to, to charge because as I said earlier, it's, it's for me, it's an equity issue. It's. It's about a fair and just transition. And, you know, a lot of people say to, to me, oh, you know, why, why are you putting a charger on this street? Nobody owns an EV on this street. And I say, well, no, no one does now, but they may do in the future. And a. Quite, quite frankly, they probably won't buy an EV if their only solution is going to a petrol station or a supermarket and paying those sorts of prices and having to park, you know, 15 minutes away from the house.

Liz Allan [00:49:14]:
Yes.

Laura Waldron [00:49:15]:
So, yeah, a lot of it is kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. We're putting this infrastructure in now to sort of encourage people to make that switch. So, yeah, having infrastructure that's available for everybody think is a really big thing for us and a really big target for us. And I think in general, just encouraging people, whether that's within the council, whether that's in schools, whether that's the general public, just encouraging people to have those conversations and be talking about these issues. You know, like I say, there's a lot of misinformation out there, there's a lot of myths, but actually, the more people know about these issues, the more people can challenge those attitudes and those assumptions. And so, yeah, I just, I. One of the big things, as I said earlier, we. We want to engage with people and give them information so they feel they have the tools to make the choices they want to.

Liz Allan [00:50:18]:
Love it. I love it. Like I said to you, I really, really would love to talk to you more, even more about the, you know, about all the other wonderful things that you're doing, because it just, it just sounds like you've got your hands full.

Laura Waldron [00:50:30]:
But never a dull day.

Liz Allan [00:50:34]:
I know. If you're gonna, if you're ever gonna go anywhere to leave a legacy behind, this is. This is the job to be in, isn't it?

Laura Waldron [00:50:40]:
Absolutely. And I've always said to people, if you want a role where you can really see the impacts of what you're doing, there's nothing like local government, you know, just both physically or kind of, you know, culture-wise, just the impact that local councils have on everyday. You know, there are so many aspects of people's lives that. And a lot of people don't realise the whole scope and scale of what it is that local authorities do. But, yeah, the ability to be able to make a real tangible difference and impact for local people is, you know, I think one of the most powerful things about working in local government.

Liz Allan [00:51:21]:
Fantastic. Well, listen, I'm just going to say thank you, Laura. Thank you for joining me. It's been, it's been so interesting to talk to you and it was lovely to meet you a few weeks back. But yeah, again, I should probably get you back on again just to talk about all the climate change stuff, because it just sounds fantastic. But, but yes. So thank you to you and to everybody else watching and listening, I'm going to say thank you. As I always say, please do check out our socials, you know, like, share, subscribe, do all those wonderful things.

Liz Allan [00:51:53]:
Check out our LinkedIn podcast page for Electric Evolution. And to everyone, thanks for watching and listening, and I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.