And for our next electric
Abandoned council cars vanish after our story... only to turn up in a private car park
Council officials moved some of their fleet of electric cars to a “hidden” car park after embarrassing revelations about their lack of use.
We revealed how South Lanarkshire Council’s new EV cars – bought with a £1million taxpayer- funded Scott ish Government grant – had been left abandoned in car parks.
Only days after our story, bosses ordered many of the 141 eco vehicles, marked with council livery, to be moved to a car park which is out of sight to the public.
Rows of the same white Renault Zoe cars, which cost up to £ 32,000, were moved to the new car park at Montrose House in Hamilton.
One resident said: “The cars were quietly moved last week a few days after the Sunday Mail story about them at the top of the multi-storey in Duke Street.
“They weren’t there before and I haven’t seen any of them move since they appeared.
“This new car park is different and is not accessible for members of the public – it’s pretty hidden. It’s unclear why they would have moved them now. You can only think it’s to avoid more criticism about them not being used.
“It’s good to see the council do something fast when they want to. In my experience, it takes them two weeks to put a bulb in a close or months to cut a bit of grass.”
Scottish Labour spokesperson for net zero, energy and transport Monica Lennon said: “The timing
in this is extremely suspect. It looks like they have been caught out. The pandemic meant many council workers were working from council offices but there were plenty of key workers employed by the council, such as carers, who could have used these cars during the height of the pandemic.”
And it has emerged that other
local authorities, also awarded grants by Transport Scotland to buy electric vehicles, have moved their fleets from public car parks.
Scotland’s biggest authority, Glasgow City Council, admitted it kept dozens of black Nissan Leaf cars in the SECC and Hydro car park for 18 months.
South Lanarkshire Council,
the fifth biggest of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, insisted its eco cars are going to be used and had only been restricted because of the pandemic.
A spokesman said: “Most of the EV cars have been in use for some time and, as was always planned, the remainder are becoming operational as council services are stepped up now it is possible for them to do so.
“A number of the EV cars were recently moved to the car park near Montrose House simply because that is where many of the staff who are using them are based.”
A Glasgow City Counci l spokesman said lockdown measures had prevented them from training staff how to drive their eco cars.
He said: “These were parked up for a large part of the last 18 months due to Tier 4 restrictions, which prevented in-vehicle training.
“The training programme is now back up and running and that is helping to bring the cars into service across the different service areas of the council, with cars being distributed a round va r ious counci l premises.”