By Susan Wells, director of EV and solar at Hive
Fleet electrification plans depend not only on the vehicles operators choose, but on charging infrastructure drivers can realistically access.
For operators with depot-based vehicles or drivers who can charge at home, the transition to EVs is relatively straightforward to model.
The more complex question is how to support employees who park on terraced streets, live in flats, or operate in areas where public charging is still developing.
For those drivers, access to reliable local charging will play an important role in whether an EV policy works consistently in practice.
That’s the gap the Government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund is designed to close.
The £381 million programme, allocated to local authorities across England, is intended to deliver the on-street residential charging network needed by drivers who cannot charge at home.
It combines capital funding for charger rollout with a separate capability fund to help councils build the internal resource and expertise needed to deliver long-term charging infrastructure projects.
That’s why, for fleet decision-makers, LEVI is more than a policy initiative. Its progress will help shape how confidently operators can electrify across real-world fleets, not just the easiest-to-transition vehicles.
Towards the end of last year, we submitted Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to councils across England to understand where LEVI delivery stands. Of the 62 councils that responded, 54 had not yet spent any of their LEVI capital allocation.
While that may appear slow at first glance, it reflects where many councils are in the programme cycle. Capital approvals only began flowing in earnest during 2024, and designing, tendering and contracting complex infrastructure programmes takes time, particularly for smaller or newer local authority EV teams.
Suffolk County Council, the first authority in England to sign a LEVI contract, did so in April 2025. Its first charger went live in January 2026.
Even at the front of the queue, the journey from contract award to live infrastructure took the best part of a year. Most councils are only now reaching that stage.
That context is important for fleet operators planning against fixed decarbonisation timelines.
The wider charging picture also reinforces the need for local infrastructure delivery. According to Zapmap, the UK had 120,388 public chargers at the end of April 2026. On the surface, that sounds substantial, but the headline number does not tell the full story for fleets.
The pace of new installations has slowed, from 24,557 chargers added in 2024 to 13,281 in 2025 – a fall of almost half.
Much of the growth that is taking place is focused on rapid and ultra-rapid en-route charging. Standard on-street residential charging – the type LEVI is intended to deliver and the type many fleet drivers will depend on outside working hours – is where availability remains more uneven.
Regional variation is also important. Greater London has more than 31,000 public chargers, while the North East has 3,726.
For operators running vehicles across mixed geographies, those differences can affect rollout planning, driver communications and assumptions around charging access.
Electrification strategies may therefore need to account for local variation in infrastructure availability, particularly in regions where public charging is still developing. At present, the timeline for when LEVI will materially change provision in specific areas remains unclear.
Three practical factors will influence the pace of delivery.
Procurement
Councils are managing complex, long-term infrastructure contracts, often with different local requirements and levels of previous experience.
Standardised national frameworks that authorities can adopt, rather than build from scratch, could help shorten the time between funding approval and first installation
Resourcing
Some smaller and newer EV teams are still building the capacity and experience needed to deliver projects at scale. Greater involvement from private sector partners, as delivery collaborators rather than simply contracted suppliers, could help bring practical infrastructure expertise into the process earlier.
We advise fleets to build charging strategies around the realities of driver access and local infrastructure availability, rather than assuming charging provision will develop evenly across all regions.
Visibility
There is currently no consistent public reporting on LEVI project status. For fleet operators trying to plan around charging availability in specific locations, regular and publicly available updates on delivery progress by authority would support better-informed decisions.
2026 should be the year LEVI moves meaningfully from procurement into delivery. That is positive progress.
For fleet operators, the key will be understanding where that delivery is happening, how quickly it is likely to affect their operating areas, and what it means for vehicle rollout, driver confidence and wider electrification plans.