Islington Council runs a fleet of over 500 vehicles and are moving all of its fleet vehicles to full battery electric. With more vans going home with drivers at night, the council needed a way to pay drivers back for home charging that could grow alongside the fleet.
We spoke to Chris Demetriou, Assistant Director for Corporate Fleet and Accessible Community Transport at Islington Council, about how home charging reimbursement used to work and what's changed since the council started working with us.
A manual process that wouldn't scale
Before Islington came to us, reimbursing drivers for home charging was largely manual. Drivers brought in their energy bills and charging costs, and the fleet team then had to work out how much energy had gone into charging each council van. As Chris puts it, the whole thing was "a little bit of a faff".
As EV take-up grew, especially through the council's home vehicle trial, the team knew they'd need a much simpler way to reimburse home charging that could grow with them.
Why Islington chose Rightcharge
Chris looked at quite a few suppliers that could offer home charging reimbursement, and we came out on top. "By far, Rightcharge was the best platform out there that I'd seen."
What it looks like for drivers
Drivers just plug in at home and the reimbursement goes straight onto their energy account. That means there are no bills to bring in and nobody has to work out how much energy went into their vehicle. They find the whole process really easy, and the council hasn't had a single complaint since it went live.
Chris told us that getting paid correctly has never been an issue either. "We've never had drivers come to us and say they're out of pocket or they've not been paid correctly. Overall, it has worked really, really well for us."
Support whenever it's needed
Getting a new process off the ground always raises questions, and our team has been on hand to help with every one of them. "They've helped us with every query, however big or small. Having that support and a prompt response has been really, really helpful."
Chris finished with a message for our team: "Thank you to everyone at Rightcharge for being absolutely brilliant in helping us get this off the ground."