Tackling inequalities: digital inclusion in Greenwich

Many of our projects are about breaking down barriers between people and technology; ensuring that the advantages of any innovation are accessible to all, whether that’s a new mobility solution or access to digital services. This was particularly vital during the pandemic, as there was an overlap between groups vulnerable to the risks of COVID-19 and communities with high levels of digital exclusion. For our latest blog, Project Manager, Hiba Alaraj explains how DG Cities helped, from understanding people’s needs, to delivering training, equipment and empowering community champions - starting a ripple effect that has improved people’s lives in Greenwich, and now has lessons for councils across the UK.

Being digitally capable can significantly improve people’s day to day lives. The ability to use the internet and devices such as laptops, computers and phones can bring about endless opportunities; it can let you connect with family and friends, access online banking, shopping, education and employment. On the other hand, those that lack these skills are at a higher disadvantage.  

As technology progresses, services such as health care, banking and council systems are increasingly moving online. Digitally excluded users are not well equipped to benefit from this shift, making them less likely to easily access certain services, including health services and GP surgeries. The importance of digital inclusion was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereby many were digitally excluded due to various reasons, and therefore unable to access predominantly online services such as healthcare and vaccine bookings. Digital inclusion during COVID-19 is an integral part of enabling the most vulnerable groups to reduce their risks to the virus by providing them with a virtual means of communicating, working, shopping and accessing healthcare. 

Communities within Woolwich, Charlton, Thamesmead Moorings and Plumstead, and Glyndon within Greenwich were identified by the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Public Health team as having a higher risk of disproportionate impact from COVID-19. Over a year ago, DG Cities was appointed by the council to identify and address the barriers to digital inclusion in parts of the borough. 

Understanding people’s barriers

To address the negative impacts of digital exclusion, we spoke to over 50 local residents and members of key community groups in Greenwich to understand people’s barriers to accessing and using the internet and different technologies. Through these discussions, it was evident that many people within these vulnerable communities are digitally excluded for various reasons, including: lack of disposable income, limited access to devices, inability to pay for broadband, access to old or inadequate devices, lack of trust, confidence in the internet, and language barriers which prevent people learning how to use devices. 

Addressing these barriers was challenging, yet in working with the council’s public health and digital teams, we were able to develop an extensive digital inclusion programme with the local community. Greenwich Get Digital ‘Loan and Learn’ Scheme was set up to provide Greenwich’s most vulnerable, disadvantaged and at-risk residents with access to free devices and digital training. Over the course of five months, together with the council, we successfully delivered a combination of 92 laptops and tablets to 15 community organisations, which could be loaned directly to disadvantaged and vulnerable members of the community. The need for these specific devices was determined through our discussions with members of the public. To address connectivity issues, the devices were fitted with pre-paid data cards to allow users to access the internet. 

Building skills and confidence

Launch event for the project, lending devices at a community centre in Barnfield

Our research told us that providing access to the internet was not enough. Many people needed training to support them to learn and build their confidence. Therefore, alongside the device distribution, we  partnered with the community-based company, Starting Point to deliver a combination of virtual and face-to-face lessons to 47 Greenwich residents to develop their digital skills. Participants learned the basic skills required to live and work safely online, including how to access council and COVID-19 related health services. Alongside this, a total of 41 Greenwich residents were trained to act as ‘Digital Champions’ to support vulnerable members of their local community to safely access the internet and use digital devices and services.

Over the course of several months, the project was able to reach many different communities, and made a positive impact for the residents: 

“Since we received our 5 sets of Samsung Tabs, we have now been able to [help] many more of our Isolated Elderly Gurkha Veterans and Families in the Borough… We are proud now of being able to use the tablets to teach, explain Covid-19 information/Health Wellbeing/Mental Health Awareness/Vaccination and Self-Testing Videos to the elderly, people with disabilities and those with no IT skills and no internet access. With the continuation of the digital training sessions and with additional devices, we can better provide/care for our Nepalese Community as well as coordinate and integrate better with other communities in the Borough.”

Nepalese Gurkha Community spokesperson

The Greenwich Get Digital pilot was a great opportunity for the council and community to explore how best to support those most affected by the pandemic to get online and connect with others. This urgent work will have an enduring impact. Since our initiative, the Royal Borough of Greenwich has taken the lessons from the programme to refine and improve it. Given that over a fifth (22%) of people in the UK are still digitally excluded, it's important that projects like this are developed and trialled by local authorities and charities across the UK.

A case study for electric vehicle infrastructure in rural areas: Moretonhampstead, Devon

Continuing our series of blogs on the shift to electric vehicles in rural areas, our Head of Smart Mobility, Kim Smith focuses on the picturesque Devon town of Moretonhampstead to explore some of the challenges of providing charging infrastructure along its ancient narrow streets. Here, she explains some of the tools for identifying gaps in provision, and how DG Cities brings it all together, working with experts across disciplines to develop a strategy to help local residents and businesses go electric.

Moretonhampstead from Hingston Rocks, Martin Bodman

REME (Rural Electric Mobility Enabler) is an Innovate UK-funded project looking at the infrastructure challenges of supporting the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) in rural areas. As part of this work, we developed several case studies identifying areas with barriers to, and opportunities for, charging infrastructure to support both residents and visitors. Overall, the project has three primary innovation strands aimed at understanding and helping address rural EV infrastructure: 

• A ‘cold mapping’ tool developed by consultancy, Field Dynamics. This is a data visualisation tool which identifies areas which are, for different reasons, not attracting public charge point provision, and where a critical number of households don’t have an option for home charging.

• The development of software company, Bonnet’s peer-to-peer platform to facilitate private charge point sharing (similar to an Airbnb model, but for EV chargers).

• A modelling tool from EDF Energy to look at car park spaces and gauge if a conventional charging solution is feasible, or if an off-grid PV/battery charging option is more viable.

The more work we do in rural areas, the more obvious it becomes that ‘levelling up’ isn’t as straightforward as the north/south divide we so often hear about. The exclusion and high levels of deprivation already experienced in some of our rural communities leaves them very much in danger of being left behind, not least when it comes to the dash to meet net-zero transport targets.

Moretonhampstead

Moretonhampstead sits on the edge of Dartmoor at the intersection of two of the very few roads which cross the moor. It’s a small market town and forms the eastern gateway to the National Park for many of its 2.3 million annual visitors. 

The town is home to a resident population of a little under 2,000, a lot of whom earn their living (directly or indirectly) from the influx of both stay and day visitors. Others rely on their cars to commute either directly or to the nearest rail link some 12 miles away. Looking at a picture of the wider area, visitor numbers on Dartmoor have remained fairly stable overall since 2003, rising from 2.3 million to 2.39 million in 2016.

Following conversations with Visit Devon and Devon County Council, a number of reasons emerged that made Moretonhampstead a good case study candidate:

• Most visitors and residents use private vehicles – there is no train service and bus services to the town are limited.

• On-street charging is not possible in many of the town’s narrow, busy streets.

• Visitor numbers are reliably high and tourism makes a major contribution to the local economy. If we look at pre-pandemic figures, revenue generated by tourism on Dartmoor has grown from £87.5 million in 2003 to over £144 million in 2016.

• Off-street parking is limited.

• Internet connections can be ‘a bit sketchy’.

• Devon County Council (a project partner) owns a public car park close to the town centre.

For Moretonhampstead, the first task was to create a ‘cold map’ to see if DG Cities’ initial research flagging the town as a candidate for further investigation was correct. The cold map is a data visualisation tool in which a number of variables can be overlaid, such as existing charge points, all available off-street parking (and therefore the option to charge at home), grid capacity, digital connectivity and footway/highway width. All of this can be plotted and analysed to assess opportunities for on-street provision, as well as investigating publicly or privately owned car parking space. The image below shows several of the data layers from the Moretonhampstead cold map:

Source: Field Dynamics. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2022

With these particular layers activated, we can see:

• The extent of Moretonhampstead – the hatched blue line. ONS classification data was used to define the rural settlements and the polygon boundaries were created by the project.

• The red dots represent households with no on-street parking, the green dots are households with one space and the orange dots are households with space for two cars.

• The Devon County Council car park is shown centre left of the map (a white dot).

• Directly south of the car park is the green pylon symbol, which denotes a substation close by with good excess capacity.

What does the cold map tell us?

The outputs from the mapping showed that more than a quarter of households in Moretonhampstead had no access to off-street parking. What the town does have, however, within 200 metres of the main square, is a Devon County Council-owned, 65-space public car park - and what’s more, the grid currently has good capacity in the area. 

Not shown in this image are the additional layers of digital connectivity (which is fair) and constraints for on-street provision because of limited street/footway width and seasonal congestion, for many of the ‘red dot’ households. The map gives us a clear, data-driven picture of the issues specific to the area, but the solutions are potentially applicable to other small market towns.

We knew there were barriers to EV charging in Moretonhampstead, but the cold map gave us a more accurate, data-based picture, allowing as to look at the town as a whole and zoom in at a street-by-street level. We found significant physical challenges, from the narrow streets and footways to grid capacity. We discovered that within a five-minute walk of the council’s car park, there are 225 households with no potential for a home charger – could they use chargers there? Are there other areas of the town where car parks or street width and grid capacity would accommodate public charge points? So, the next job for the project is to draw on EDF’s modelling tool to scope out the car park as a potential site for public charge points, and investigate whether they should be on- or off-grid. Although we’re coming to the end of this short project, work here isn’t finished; having the data allows us to help the council with suggestions about the location, type and speed of chargers that would be needed, both now and to facilitate the future uptake of EVs. Follow our blog for more on some of the solutions we proposed…

Sharing Cities, sharing expertise: continued collaboration at the end of our European project

We talk a lot about knowledge-sharing and cross-border collaboration, but few of our projects demonstrate the value of this at an international scale better than the EU-funded Sharing Cities initiative, which brought together project teams across London, Milan, Lisbon, Burgas, Warsaw and Bordeaux. As the programme ends, Head of Strategy and Operations, Heather Yedigaroff reflects on its value and the relationships that it forged - and which continue, as its legacy.

Unsplash/CJ Toscano

Here at DG Cities, we’re all about collaboration. Our strength as an organisation comes from our multi-disciplinary team considering innovation from different perspectives and working together to solve problems. We see collaboration as being so fundamental to our success as a company that we have set it as one of our core company values, the behaviours and skills that we value in our colleagues.

Of course, we love collaborating with other organisations too. Some of the most exciting and far reaching projects we’ve done at DG Cities have been partnership projects where we’ve worked with companies and academia and brought all of our collective brainpower together to do something new and innovative. Some stand-out memories for me were working with Magtec and Veolia on how to develop the UK’s first electric refuse collection vehicle, and the time we worked with TRL, Cisco, Loughborough University and Cubic to develop the Smart Mobility Living Lab in Greenwich, the UK’s most advanced real-world test environment for future mobility. Neither of these projects would have been possible for one partner to deliver alone. It was only through our collaboration and sharing of knowledge and expertise that we were able to deliver those projects successfully.

Sharing Cities delegation

Sharing Cities: 2016-2022

Over the past six years, another initiative we have been quietly involved in is the Sharing Cities project, an EU Horizon 2020-funded programme. This was a Greater London Authority-led collaboration of 30 different partners focused on six European cities: London, Milan, Lisbon, Burgas, Warsaw and Bordeaux. London, Milan and Lisbon acted as ‘lighthouse cities’ and worked together to develop and implement replicable urban digital solutions and collaborative models. The ‘fellow’ cities, Bordeaux, Burgas, and Warsaw, then sought to replicate the solutions in their own areas. Within London, the Royal Borough of Greenwich was the official London demonstrator area and DG Cities has supported the Council to deliver on the project’s ambitious transport and energy related goals.  

The project officially kicked off on 1st January 2016 and over the last six years we’ve had the opportunity to work alongside and learn from our colleagues in the other cities. The project implemented 10 different measures and the beauty of the programme was that whilst the cities were  united by the common goal of finding new ways to improve outcomes for their residents, they each had different starting points and constraints, and tailored the delivery of the measures according to local circumstances.

Milan, for example, has excelled in building retrofit. It set itself ambitious goals and delivered first-of-its-kind building retrofits to 20 multi-property buildings. In a multi property building,  there is no one single building owner to oversee the building design and decision-making process. To overcome this, Milan developed a participatory and co-design approach that will have widespread application across all cities in Europe. 

Unsplash/Helio Dilolwa

When the project began, Lisbon already had impressive shared mobility services, such as a shared bike scheme and car clubs, but through the project, the city has hugely improved and expanded those existing services. One of Lisbon’s challenges is its hills, so to combat that, Lisbon has expanded its bike sharing services to include large numbers of e-bikes. The ebikes proved so popular that Lisbon is now pressing ahead and extending their trial across the city and into the suburbs, with 1,500 e-bikes and a network of new cycling infrastructure. Lisbon also uses a real-time, incentive-based system that generates offers for users to move bikes from overcrowded docking stations to meet demand forecasted in other locations. The e-bike scheme generated over 3 million trips by 16,000 users. It led to a 38% modal shift from the bus and 16% from cars. A massive 26% of users use the scheme daily. Lisbon also now has 160 electric vehicles in its public car-sharing scheme. The service uses a keyless sharing app that allows members of the public to access the vehicles. The vehicles are monitored via GPS and managed through a smart fleet management platform

In Greenwich, we have installed a highly innovative water-source heating system, which will warm 95 homes at the Ernest Dence Estate. This is part of a wider scheme at the Estate, which has included building repairs and redecoration, window repairs, loft insulation, new low-energy LED lighting and smart devices. Renewing the heating and hot water system using a water-source heat pump will provide a more efficient heating system, producing less carbon emissions, improving local air quality and delivering 5,309 tonnes of CO2e savings over 25 years – the equivalent of growing around 87,000 trees. Greenwich also had the Greenwich Energy Hero initiative - a ‘demand-side response’ trial in which participating households were incentivised to reduce their electricity at times of high demand on the electricity grid. Participants that used less electricity during a ‘peak response alert’ earned rewards that could be turned into a donation to a local charity, or a shopping voucher for personal use. The Greenwich Energy Hero app also showed their live electricity usage information, historic usage charts and energy saving tips and advice. This earned Greenwich a Harvard 2020 Innovation Award in Citizen Engagement. 

In Greenwich, we also looked  at electrification and developed an Electric Vehicle Strategy for the borough, which sets out how the Borough will use its position as an accelerator of EV infrastructure deployment to enable every resident and business to use electric vehicles by 2030. We also worked with the borough’s fleet department on a study looking at how to electrify the 550 vehicles in the borough’s vehicle fleet.

As important as these initiatives were the concepts of sharing and replication. Partners continually shared information on their barriers and progress with initiatives. There was also a workstream focused on how to ensure the measures could be replicated in other cities; toolkits and other resources were developed and 100 cities across Europe engaged with the project. 

It was a privilege to have been involved in a project with such a large impact and to have had the opportunity to learn from and work alongside such amazing  partners. It’s fair to say there were a few misty eyes at the recent final project meeting with the EU, but of course the relationships we all developed will continue far beyond the project. We’re already looking for the next opportunity to work together and continue what we’ve started.

Would you let your neighbour charge their car on your driveway?

Peer-to-peer charging is just one of the strategies being explored in our REME project, which aims to grow electric vehicle use in rural areas…

As the UK’s transition from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles gathers pace, recent reports have drawn attention to potential inequity in access to charging infrastructure. Earlier this month, lobbying group, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders warned of a growing regional divide in the provision of public vehicle charging points. Last week, the Resolution Foundation thinktank highlighted the financial advantage afforded to homeowners with private driveways, who can benefit from off-peak tariffs. Our project, REME (Rural Electric Mobility Enabler) is helping to support the growth of electric vehicles in rural areas – we asked Head of Smart Mobility, Kim Smith about some of the strategies they are trialling to make it easier for every vehicle owner to make the switch.

Craig Cameron/Unsplash

REME is an Innovate UK-funded project that aims to promote and support the growth of electric vehicles in rural areas – essentially, to identify ‘where and what’ the needs are and explore strategies to meet them. To make the choice to go electric, people need to feel confident there is reliable charging infrastructure in place. DG Cities has been working with EDF Energy, Bonnet, Devon County Council and Field Dynamics on three key activities. First, establishing a ‘cold mapping’ methodology to identify potential charging sites, map needs and available connectivity - this means capturing data from advanced geospatial modelling and analysis and overlaying it on a map. Second, testing a peer-to-peer charging solution. And finally, trialling an evaluation tool for off-grid charging solutions.

Understanding demand and need

Every local authority has different priorities. In Devon, the priority is trying to work out where infrastructure needs to be put in place to support residents, as well as managing seasonal peaks in demand. As a former transport planning lead in a local authority, I have been in their position. Then, when we were assessing public requests for charging points, the number of requests in a particular location was taken as an indicator of demand. Our cold mapping exercise for REME has allowed us to look at an area in a much more nuanced way and see where the areas of real need are. In that sense, it’s a more equitable, data-driven approach.

For example, in one village, there was considerable demand from residents for charging points. We used the cold map to show that there was more than sufficient capacity from the National Grid, additionally there was a high level of digital connectivity. When we looked at the housing stock, we could also see that the majority of properties had access to private off-street parking, and on-street parking was fairly well distributed. This suggested that there were possibilities of relatively easy solutions - either people could install their own home charge points, or there could be a relatively straightforward provision of on-street units. But if the purpose of the exercise is tackling inequality, what happens if you don’t have your own drive? What happens when there’s no footway or available highway width for on street parking and your front door opens directly onto the road? One answer is developing peer-to-peer charging networks, whereby private charging points are made available to neighbours via an app, which looks after payment, hours of operation and insurance.

Finding alternative solutions

In another case study, we looked at households in Devon without off-street parking in a scenic, narrow-laned town centre. Working with project partner, Field Dynamics our cold map process identified homes where, again, it’s impossible to park on the street. This analysis also showed a council car park within walking distance, so with project partner EDF, who modelled the capacity of the car park to accommodate charge points, we investigated how the council might utilise that in a way that works for residents. Some of the different routes open to the local authority here might be acting as the delivery organisation to get charging points put in; entering into a joint venture with a charge point provider; or simply offering the space to a provider as a commercial proposition, if the area is popular with tourists, for instance. Here, potential operators have a reliable income from local residents using the infrastructure off-season, coupled with a steep rise over the summer months.

This work is vital because in rural areas, people depend more on their cars – there isn’t the same public transport network to support them when petrol and diesel are phased out. The shift to electric has to happen, but it has to be managed carefully and equitably.

REME has been a collaborative effort, both within our team, our consortium and with external agencies. English Heritage has shared useful information on visitor and vehicle numbers, and we have worked closely with Exmouth National Parks and the Forestry Commission. This allowed us to obtain real world data relating to seasonal variations in the numbers of visitors and vehicles. The advantage of working with these organisations at a local level is that we can help to inform their national strategy, while getting an understanding of how things work on the ground from site managers. We have also been looking at vehicle charging provision in holiday accommodation, from cottages and Airbnb rentals to hotels, investigating the case for asking these sites to share charge points with local residents.

Ivy Barn/Unsplash

A case study with applicability across the UK

As well as helping Devon develop their strategy, REME is valuable as a case study for other rural areas. More recently, it has informed our analysis of sites in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire with very different demographic trends, including semi-urban centres which are well serviced by public transport.

Meeting the challenge of the transition to EVs requires a mix of pragmatism and optimism for innovation. For example, a peer-to-peer strategy relies on people being willing to share their private space – to what extent will they? What are the barriers to you letting your neighbour charge their car on your driveway? One of the key issues we identified is the transaction itself, and how that process is dealt with – neighbours don’t want to physically ‘sell’ energy to each other. An important aspect of the software Bonnet is developing is that it takes care of this transaction, the booking slots, even potentially restricting who is able to use a particular charging point. In this way, homeowners retain a sense of control, while supporting their community. To better understand these views, DG Cities and EDF conducted a local survey which gathered more than 1,000 responses. This data helped us understand the exact barriers to implementing a peer-to-peer system, as well as wider challenges to EV uptake.

There’s still a lot of work to do, but if we look at the popularity of an idea like Airbnb, where many people have welcomed the concept of letting guests stay in their spare rooms, there is clearly some appetite and scope to extend this to vehicles. As with any innovation, it comes down to the community – if public engagement is successful, if people understand the potential benefits of the idea and how it works in practice, and if they trust the systems in place, it has the potential to be transformative. The end goal is cleaner, greener and safer transport that is available to all.

Internet of Things (IoT): what are the benefits for local authorities?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is more than a buzzword. While it might not get as much attention as machine learning and big data, it’s a rapidly growing technology that we’re only going to be hearing more about. It has the potential to be transformative. It is predicted that IoT could help reduce UK CO2 emissions by 17.4 million tonnes per year. Another report estimates that IoT will have a global economic impact between $5.5 trillion and $12.6 trillion by 2030. But what exactly is IoT, how can it contribute to urban innovation and how does the technology work?

Robin Glauser/Unsplash

The Internet of Things is all about devices connecting and communicating with one another. It involves linking a physical object, a ‘thing’, to the internet via fixed broadband or a wireless network (e.g. WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G) so that it can send and/or receive data. IoT is all around us, from wearable tech like watches that monitor health, to smart street lights that only switch on when their sensors detect motion.

IoT in practice

The Royal Borough of Greenwich has set out a smart cities strategy, which DG Cities is helping to develop and deliver, to address some of the challenges facing residents. Together, we have identified four scenarios, or ‘use cases’, where IoT can be combined with behavioural nudges, end user engagement and education to address some of the council’s most significant issues.

• Fly-tipping: combining awareness-raising and behavioural change interventions with IoT monitoring technology to reduce fly tipping in Greenwich housing estates. In each use case, we are working closely with the RBG’s Housing Services team, ensuring that stakeholders support our proposed solutions. DG Cities will pilot the solutions in sample estates, evaluate the success of each and then scale across the borough.

• Smarter homes: a smart home strategy for installing environmental and fire safety devices in estates to detect health hazards such as carbon monoxide, damp and mould. As well as making homes safer and healthier, it’s also intended to create a more proactive repair service, as the council receives immediate alerts when there is an issue. They can collect performance data and insights and use these to make data-driven improvements.

• Solar sharing: the equitable distribution of power generated from solar PV to households via solar microgrids. At present, solar power generated on housing estates is only used towards communal demands, for example corridor lighting. Any excess power - often over 90% - is sold back to the National Grid. Installing microgrids directly benefits residents and helps the council decarbonise.

• Saving energy: finding ways to help residents reduce their home energy consumption using a combination of behavioural change interventions and IoT. This aligns with the Government target of reducing the carbon emissions from heating our homes by 95% over the next 30 years.

System in detail: smart meters

The energy saving use case will involve researching and rolling out smart meter systems. If we take a close look at a smart meter system, we can get a deeper understanding of how IoT technology works.

A smart meter system has three devices:

• an electricity meter, which records electricity consumption in almost real-time

• a gas meter, which records gas consumption every half hour

• an in-home display: a digital screen that displays a summary of electricity and gas consumption and the corresponding bills.

These three devices are connected via a home-area network (HAN). The electricity meter and gas meter also send data directly to the energy supplier via a wide-area network (WAN). This connection between the energy meters and the energy supplier is more convenient, as there is no need to manually take readings of energy usage, and households receive accurate figures for bills rather than estimates. Another major benefit of smart meter systems - and IoT in general - is that they help us make informed decisions. Smart meter systems give us valuable insight into our home energy use and are a useful tool to reduce our carbon emissions and energy bills. We can see which appliances use the most energy. The government’s cost benefit analysis predicts that if smart meter systems were rolled out across the UK, they could save a total of £5.6bn in energy bills and reduce carbon emissions by 45 million tonnes.

Risks and benefits

There are concerns about IoT, particularly around cyber security. When devices are connected to each other and to the internet, this allows multiple entry points for unauthorised users. One way to increase the security of a system is to encrypt data. For smart meter systems, the data transmitted across a WAN is encrypted to prevent hackers from interfering with energy suppliers. However, even if the systems are secure, getting consensus from residents is a challenge in itself. Studies show that 84% of social housing residents are sceptical about IoT due to data privacy concerns. For each use case, we intend to address residents’ concerns early on, providing openness and transparency on how data would be stored and used, and by whom. While clearly communicating the benefits of IoT, we will help residents make an informed decision on whether they want to participate in use case trials.

We will also take care to capture only necessary data; for the fly tipping use case, we have ensured the smart cameras fully comply with legal requirements, such as only sending alerts when unusual activity is detected, and not using facial recognition technology. Finally, installing IoT can be complicated, lengthy and expensive, with difficulties often arising when trying to integrate IoT with legacy systems. To overcome this, we are closely collaborating with Royal Borough of Greenwich stakeholders to understand the existing infrastructure and policies in place and to determine how IoT will fit in. We are also looking at longer term strategies and have identified where IoT would deliver value.

“The potential applications of IoT technology are hugely exciting. As well as the cost and environmental benefits of monitoring energy use, might sensors allow vulnerable elderly people live for longer in their own homes? DG Cities is analysing the opportunities, as well as seeing how new technology might address recurring problems. Further research and engagement will be necessary, but these early use cases aim to achieve tangible benefits for Greenwich residents.”

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Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and our blog to keep up to date with our work, or get in touch to learn more about how we partner with local authorities to harness technological innovation for public good.

Meet Isobel, our new Behavioural Scientist!

We’re excited to share a first post from our new Behavioural Scientist, Isobel Madle. From helping residents manage rising energy costs to applying her behavioural science insights to the issue of fly-tipping, it’s been a busy but rewarding start to life at DG Cities…

Image: BrixtonBuzz

I began working as a Behavioural Scientist at DG Cities on the 1st of December 2021. I was looking for a role that would allow me to use my Masters to develop and implement behaviour change interventions and to work in an area that I’m passionate about. Despite this being a tall ask, DG Cities managed to fit the bill!

My academic background is in psychology. I originally undertook my undergraduate degree expecting to become a therapist, but once I discovered how behavioural science could make a positive impact on the lives of more people, at a population scale, I realised that this was the career path for me. After university, I spent three years working in the research and innovation arm of a communications agency growing my experience with various research methods, such as using AI and psychometric profiling to understand human motivations.

The pandemic gave me a chance to evaluate how I wanted my career to grow, so I began a Masters in Behaviour Change at UCL in 2020 whilst continuing my role in communications. I took modules in systems dynamics, where I developed a model to show how complex city systems influences levels of childhood obesity; and environmental policy, where I wrote a paper about how the controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTNs) policy – which was making news headlines at the time – could be improved using insights from psychology and sociology. This newfound interest in cities and policy and a desire to be a behavioural scientist is what ultimately led me to work at DG Cities.

My first month at DG Cities has been extremely varied and a month of firsts. My first project is to work with Greenwich Council to reduce residential and commercial fly-tipping in council estates around the borough. I’ve been conducting research, designing communications materials and driving around the borough with council operatives to measure the number of fly-tipping incidents. I’m also working with the UK Government to develop surveys about electric vehicles – another first for me!

On a personal level, I completed my first escape room at the Christmas party and played my first game of ‘bad santa’, which I came out of pretty well, winning a huge cheese board just in time for Christmas!

At DG Cities, we’re about to begin a new project which I’m really proud to be a part of. We will be deploying a behaviour change project with Greenwich Council to deploy IoT technology and smart meters in council tenants’ homes to help them manage their electricity bills and reduce their carbon footprint. With the cost-of-living crisis fast approaching, I’m hopeful this will be of real help to the people who need it most.

I’m very excited to work with DG Cities to help grow the behavioural science arm of the business. We’re constantly looking for exciting partners and opportunities to innovate and run behaviour change projects that create lasting positive change. We are bridge builders, both between the public and private sector, and between technology and behaviour. If you’re as passionate as I am about helping communities to be more sustainable and to use technology for good, it’d be great to connect!

Is the public ready for self-driving cars?

As DG Cities publishes analysis from the Project Endeavour self-driving car trials, Head of Research and Service Design, Ed Houghton explores some of the key findings. With safety a key concern, he looks at the role of public engagement in the wider adoption of the technology.

One of the Endeavour fleet of cars on the road in Greenwich, London

Self-driving or autonomous cars are often cited as the next major breakthrough in mobility innovation. As a result, there is increasing political and public interest in trials of the technology and exploring the potential uses of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in our towns and cities. One of the most significant areas of interest is public attitudes – people’s perception of AVs, their hopes and fears. It’s well known that the biggest barrier to adoption and acceptance of any new technology based on AI is low trust and limited knowledge. This is why, as part of the Project Endeavour consortium, a UK government funded initiative to trial autonomous vehicles, we investigated how members of the public feel about self-driving vehicles when they get the chance to experience one for themselves.

Experiencing autonomy first-hand

Through a live trial, we explored what the public thinks of self-driving cars, and crucially, if a journey in one can grow their knowledge and even help them to trust the technology more. In 2021, Project Endeavour ran a major trial in London, which was open to the public and widely publicised. We invited people to ride in the vehicle and experience a journey on the streets of a busy city neighbourhood. Participants were able to sit in a vehicle as it operated in autonomy, while supervised by two trained personnel: a Safety Driver and an Automated Control System Operator (ACSO). Both helped to ensure the ride was safe, and also answered any questions that members of the public might have about the technology and how the car was making decisions.

We ran before and after surveys online to explore how perceptions changed over time, and conducted face-to-face interviews, along with a series of online focus groups with the public. Alongside the trial, we ran a national study of attitudes and perceptions to act as a comparison data set.

Safety is the top priority

Our data showed that the Project Endeavour trials improved perceptions of safety. Our before and after data showed a positive change for participants in their perceptions of safety – before the trial, 68.3% believed self-driving cars are safe, yet this increased to 83.6% afterwards. In our interviews, the words “cautious” and “measured” were often used by participants to describe how the vehicle behaved.  

These findings echoed our national survey, which showed that the safety case for self-driving vehicles has yet to fully convince the public. We found that three in ten (29.9%) believe that self-driving vehicles will be safer than traditional vehicles, while 44.2% disagree. A quarter (25.9%) are undecided, but it is plausible that this group is primed to be convinced through trials, for example, or through education and more information. Safety perceptions differed by age. Older people were less positive about self-driving cars and more concerned about safety.

Does the public trust self-driving vehicles?

Cities and roads are complex, and to operate in them effectively, vehicles will need to be able to make decisions rapidly and without human intervention. Trust is a therefore a critical factor that drives acceptance and adoption. Our study showed that perceptions of trust improved for those who participated in the trial: 71.3% believed that self-driving vehicles were trustworthy before the trial experience, this increased to 87.2% afterwards.

We also developed a virtual reality (VR) experience to reach a wider audience with the experience, which showed participants a 3D video of the Oxford trial. In this realistic virtual environment, participants could ‘sit in a car’ and experience the journey themselves. We then ran a post-experience survey to measure perceptions for those who participated virtually.

VR participants were positive, and whilst it was a cross-sectional “moment-in-time” survey, qualitative data highlighted the benefits of VR, including the flexibility to use it at home. We were also able to target a wider community of participants, including elderly people and those with disabilities.

During the pandemic, the team quickly developed a virtual reality driving experience to continue the trial

What’s next for AV technology?

For cities, there is great potential in autonomous vehicle technology in terms of achieving safety and accessibility benefits, and improving the sustainability of transport networks. Our trials highlight how far the technology has come, but also how much further is left to go. The public has mixed views of the future, many still see these vehicles as a novelty, even though autonomy features increasingly in driving assistance technology, such as ABS (anti-lock brake system) that features in many vehicles on the road today.  

However, Project Endeavour has demonstrated the importance of trials and user research for understanding the public’s perceptions and views. For another of our projects, D-Risk we went out and spoke to members of the public about their ‘edge case’ driving experiences and gained a unique insight into how people feel about self-driving technology in different parts of the country. Both of these exercises demonstrate the value of engagement – in the design of new services and technologies, the public have a vital role to play. Without building trust and understanding, future technologies could suffer as they may not reflect the needs and preferences of their users – ultimately, the public will influence the wider adoption of any innovation. Deep research exploring AVs, with a focus on safety, is also critical as it will play a central role in shifting people’s views and enabling the development of evidence-based policy – and ultimately, encouraging public acceptance of a technology with huge potential. 

2021 at DG Cities: a test of our predictions and forecast for the months ahead

We asked the team, “what has been your highlight of the year (so far)?”

“Riding in a self-driving car!”

“Getting out and about after lockdown with the public driverless car trials.”

“Meeting the community centre users as part of Greenwich Get Digital, the tablet loan and digital skills scheme we set up for residents hardest hit by COVID-19.”

“Talking to people in different parts of the UK on the D-Risk tour – hearing all their strange experiences on the road, but also building a better picture of how people feel about self-driving technology.”

DG Cities’ new office (right) in the Institute for Creativity and Technology, at the heart of London’s new Design District

It’s been a busy 2021 at DG Cities. We’ve been tackling digital exclusion, decarbonisation, driving the switch to electric vehicles, investigating heat pumps, delivering fleet electrification, digital connectivity and working on the UK’s first major multi-city trial of driverless cars. Alongside this, we have been learning from the DG Cities Research Community how people feel about some of the most pressing issues facing our towns and cities, from smart homes to e-scooters. 

At last, we’ve been out and about! After a year of faces in boxes on screens, it’s been great to participate in industry events like Cenex again, meet residents in the communities we’re helping and talk to children in schools about some of the exciting new technologies we get to play work with. Over the last few months, our projects have taken us across the country. We’ve been to all corners of the UK on our D-Risk tour, asking people about their ‘edge case’ driving experiences, while our Rural Electric Mobility Enabler (REME) project took us to Devon to explore ways to grow electric mobility in the countryside. Back in the office, we have been busy analysing our findings, monitoring changes in legislation, planning and transport policy, and examining new innovations to see how they can improve people’s lives.

In 2020, at the end of a year of great change and disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, we made predictions about the year ahead, just as we find ourselves doing as another year draws to a close. However accurate these turn out to be, it’s fair to predict we will be putting our future-casting to the test again next December. For the DG Cities team, reflecting on new urban trends is as festive as a plate of mince pies – and looking to the future now feels more important than ever.

So, were we right?

Recovery

In 2020, we said… “There will be a strong focus on economic recovery from Covid-19 and regeneration in our cities, town centres and high streets, along with greater devolution of powers and finance. We want to see joined-up, city-wide approaches that address the big social, health, environmental and economic challenges.”

With the pandemic still impacting our lives, businesses that rallied during the easing of lockdown once again face a great deal of uncertainty. Covid-19 has also exposed the scale of the health and social challenges cities face – the move to working from home and school closures, for example, showed how vital digital inclusion is if any sort of levelling-up across socioeconomic groups, let alone geographical ones, is to succeed. A holistic, city-level approach is more relevant than ever.

While we are seeing signs of economic recovery, there is not going to be a return to business as usual. The pandemic has simply accelerated some of the changes in behaviour and travel we had predicted. People had become used to towns and cities with ‘peak hours’ – busy roads and transport hubs twice a day, quiet streets between 9-5, sandwich shops and services set up in business parks and city centres to serve office workers. But with the increase in flexible working, these spaces are changing. Local high streets are busier during weekdays, while many companies are downsizing their city-centre offices and rethinking their need for space at all. Sandwich shops have become mobile, taking their products to the suburbs and embracing on-demand delivery services.

With people more reluctant to use crowded transport, there has been a rise in independent micro-mobility, such as e-scooters, e-bikes and cycling. As well as exploring people’s views on e-scooters, one of our projects this year has been developing a tool for planners to anticipate these trends and evaluate emerging options, the Mobility Assessment Framework. 

Data

“2020 taught us the value of data. In 2021, we will see the ethical use of citizen data to rethink how people live in and travel around cities – increasingly, we will see how data can empower people and communities.”

While health information and ‘big data’ remains a controversial topic in 2021, we have seen evidence of this trend continue as technology advances and allows for greater integration with the fabric of the city. We have just seen the first ‘smart bus shelters’ introduced in London, which record data on noise, footfall and air pollution. And this year, we incorporated live data in our own mobility project – for the Greenwich phase of the driverless car trial, Project Endeavour, we built a stand with real-time maps and data to help people see how the service was operating. 

Neighbourhoods

“We expect the changes accelerated by the pandemic, such as the rise in hybrid working, to popularise the idea of the 15-minute city – the neighbourhoods where everything you need can be reached within 15 minutes by foot, bike or public transport.”

It’s true that with changing working patterns, travel and social restrictions, people have spent more time in the areas where they live. This has made the idea of the 15-minute city more relevant than ever. A few years ago, we published a whitepaper on the move to polycentric city development - the movement away from a radial focus on the city centre, to multiple local urban ‘villages’ - as part of Project Gateway. The trend looks set to be the widely-adopted model for sustainable urban planning, yet despite the ideal of a place where people can easily walk, cycle or take public transport, right now, people are using their cars more than ever. 

Technology is also altering the way we access local services – with a few taps on your phone, you can have the pint of milk you might previously have picked up on your way home from work dropped at your door. Online shopping has increased significantly since the start of the pandemic. Not just supermarket orders, clothes and goods, but takeaways and new service offerings from local businesses. As a result, we have seen a huge growth in deliveries of all kinds. Veg box deliveries, for example, saw sales more than double since the start of the pandemic - in April 2020, 82% of suppliers had waiting lists. Now, we need to think about consolidating these at a micro and macro level to manage multiple drop-offs to any single area. How might we use technology to harness the decarbonisation potential of this consumer trend in 2022?

Work

“Whilst some of us might shift back to the commute post pandemic, we have all taken stock and reconsidered what our new working balance might be. Work will look very different in 2021.”

The pandemic has accelerated and widened a trend for flexible and remote working that was already being adopted by managerial and highly skilled workers - it has shown that more people can benefit from the advantages of working in this way. As a result, cities need to adapt to less standardised patterns of behaviour and more diverse, localised planning - for many, the ‘workplace’ is no longer a physical space. As people have embraced working from home, it has raised new issues: how do we make sure individuals don’t feel isolated? What about childcare support in these new work settings?

Our hopes that the pandemic would be almost over by this point were optimistic, but at DG Cities, we keep learning and finding new ways of collaborating. If one word describes how our team has been working this year, it’s also ‘flexibly’. As well as moving into our shiny (literally, it’s clad in aluminium) new office in the Design District in North Greenwich, this year has given us more opportunities to meet up. Our team is still hybrid, balancing remote and office-based activities according to the project, and as guidance allows – but we are fluent in virtual systems, with our work accessible from anywhere, so it’s easy to switch between the two. To keep in touch, we bookend the week with a Monday morning briefing and Friday virtual coffee. And we have a Slack channel for the watercooler chat, so we don’t miss anyone’s new dog/DIY project/tea towel! 

Photo by Ma Ti

COP26

“There will be lots of announcements around zero-carbon initiatives and a continued push towards energy efficiency, waste reduction and positive behavioural changes from central government. We hope that we’ll also see stronger legislative commitments to reducing waste and single-use plastics, an increase in car-free urban zones and clear measures to combat air pollution in our urban areas.”

The big question – did COP26 deliver? It’s too early to say, but one positive outcome was the wider public debate it sparked, and the side events, which brought environmental issues centre stage in the mainstream media. We’re finding more clients are coming to us to find out how we can help them decarbonise and meet their net-zero goals. In the run-up to Glasgow, we wrote about some of our hopes – you can read more of our analysis here. 

It looks like we didn’t do too badly with our predictions for 2021. So how about next year? This is what our team expects to see:

“We’re still in a period of real uncertainty, in terms of the Covid-19 recovery. As new ways of living and working emerge, new services are trialled and policies proposed, our people-centred, research-driven approach is more vital than ever, in terms of building trust and acceptance. The pandemic has been disruptive; as the pieces settle, I’m hopeful we can start to shape a more inclusive, greener future.”

“There’s a strong policy emphasis on low carbon heating, but there’s been a very slow start to uptake of technologies like heat pumps. However, we do expect to see accelerating electric vehicle adoption.”

“There will be more policy debate on AI regulation around smart homes, city surveillance and autonomous vehicles.”

“We’ll get the e-scooter trial findings and new policy and regulations around them and other forms of micro-mobility - or at least public debate on their use.”

Until then, thanks for following our news and opinion this year. We’ll be sharing some new insights into our work on digital inclusion and the Internet of Things in January, as well as findings from the Endeavour driverless car trials, so stay tuned! 

Expect innovation, plan for change: a new framework to assess future mobility needs

On the launch of the Mobility Assessment Framework, Kim Smith, our Head of Smart Mobility, draws on her experience forecasting our future transport needs and evaluating competitive tenders to explain the rationale behind this useful new planning tool…

Before joining DG Cities, I spent twenty-five years working in transport planning, delivery and shaping policy in local government. As the lead on transport strategy, I had to review tenders that were worth huge sums of public money, yet I had to develop and rely on my own matrix to judge the bids. We developed the Mobility Assessment Framework (MAF) to give transport planners in a similar position the ability to assess and compare different modes, but also a means to evaluate them against each other and a set of KPIs. Equally important, this tool gives them a quantitative basis to validate their decision. For FOI requests and transparency, I know that having this clear, auditable format to the decision-making process can be really useful.

During my career, I have also worked with developers on major, long-term projects, which were built in phases over decades. Right now, our mobility options are changing so rapidly – it would have been hard to imagine just two years ago the extent to which we have seen e-scooter hire services rolled out, for example. How do developers know which modes of transport to incorporate? Invariably, the travel plan in year one will look very different to what is needed in year twenty-five. If a site has limited space and the developer wants to put in a mobility hub for residents, do they integrate electric bikes, or do they save space for car clubs or private electric vehicles? How do they lock in the level of flexibility required to incorporate innovation? The MAF was devised to aid this kind of decision-making and identify the most spatially and environmentally efficient solutions, which can deliver the greatest benefits to users.

When I was working on these projects, I did a lot of future-casting based on behavioural change, trends in mobility, modal change and the potential impacts of demographic change, as well as exploring the potential of new technologies and innovations in the sector. This has all informed the development of the MAF and its KPIs. Importantly, the tool helps us to evaluate different transport options quantitatively and with flexibility; developers can revise their mobility assessment every five years and input what has worked, what hasn’t and forecast the next advance on the horizon that might influence planning.

When our team at DG Cities started to develop the MAF, it was a standalone product, but we soon saw the advantage of using it in a very tailored way and working with local authorities, developers and mobility service providers to adapt it very precisely to their needs. It has a dataset with fifty variables, which can be benchmarked against eleven KPIs. At its most basic, we can simply plug in the data and draw direct comparisons. But I think one of the most interesting aspects is the ability to calibrate it – to give weighting to different indicators according to circumstances and strategic priorities. In this way, it’s a very clever tool to help planners focus on overall targets, whether financial or environmental. I’m really looking forward to working with our clients to put it into practice in a range of different contexts. 

To find out more about the Mobility Assessment Framework, you can download our summary report or get in touch.

“Excuse me, do you have a moment to tell us about your strangest driving experience?”

What links the cities of Coventry, York, Wrexham, Leeds, Norwich and Edinburgh?

Over the past few weeks, we have visited them all on our D-Risk tour!

The DG Cities team has been travelling all over the country collecting ‘edge cases’ (and maybe a few souvenirs). Edge cases are weird and unexpected traffic scenarios – the rare situations that challenge us as drivers, but would be impossible for a driverless car to understand.

We went to a range of places to directly capture information on very localised events, then our D-Risk partners turned them into simulations, which can be used to train and test autonomous vehicle (AV) systems. This crowd-sourced data is helping to make AVs safer on the roads in every situation, even the most unusual.  

We’ll be exploring the results and the specifics of these new edge cases soon; lots of them were fascinating, previously uncaptured scenarios, ‘unknown to science’. But I wanted to focus a little here on where the cases come from, the places we’ve been to and the people we met - for full autonomy, AVs will need to fit into all of these worlds. Also, I wanted to extend our gratitude to all the members of the public who took the time to stop and talk to us.

When we were planning our route around the UK, we deliberately set out to visit places that are often left out of AV trials. So far, we have made it to stops in England, Scotland and Wales; we’re hoping to get to Northern Ireland in the next phase. These local insights are vital, because AVs will need to feel as comfortable going through a ford in Wales as up a steep hill in Scotland. Weather, the particular features of a road and navigational errors – often these are linked to very small, distinct geographies, which can make training AVs difficult. For example, driving while blinded by the sun on a coastal road is very different to dealing with horizontal rain by a loch.

We also tried to gather examples from rural areas. While we tended to set our stand up in a city for footfall, many of the people we spoke to lived in the countryside. Wildlife is abundant and unpredictable everywhere: we heard about pheasants, deer, squirrels, partridges and even owls appearing in the edge cases we collected. Narrow country lanes with passing places, farm vehicles and even hunting parties are also definite challenges for driverless technology.

The types of venue differed too. We set up camp at museums, in office lobbies, markets and universities – a wide range, so that we could talk to people from different walks of life, with unique perspectives. These locations, more than anything else, determined whether our audience saw autonomous vehicles as an exciting new advance or viewed them with complete mistrust. Interestingly, we found that often, their doubts were not specifically aimed at AVs, but at new technologies and the idea of government as a whole. 

For driverless cars to be successful, they will need to be widely accepted. To demonstrate their potential advantages to people, we’ll need to focus a lot more on stepping out of our echo chamber and really working hard to bring along those who are not advocates yet. This might be more difficult, but it’s vital that any solution starts by engaging with the people it is intended to benefit.

Have you shared your most unusual experience on the road yet? Tell us about your own edge case here!

COP26: now it's down to the leaders - and us

“The time is now.”

“Now or never.”

“It’s one minute to midnight.”

“Either we stop it, or it stops us.”

As the rhetoric builds at COP26, so do the expectations. In our series, Countdown to COP26, we have been setting out our hopes for the summit. Hiba Alaraj started the countdown with an introduction to its key objectives, from the shift to renewables to addressing the impacts of agriculture, fossil fuel production and waste management. This was followed by Ed Houghton’s piece reminding us of the role public behaviour plays in delivering on these goals. He advocated an evidence-based approach to any behavioural interventions – we already have a good idea of what works, so we need to focus energies on the behavioural nudges that can lead to real-world changes. In the final piece last week, Hiba analysed the UK Government’s Net-Zero Strategy and identified some of the challenges ahead, such as in the rapid rollout of electric vehicle infrastructure and the potential barriers to the take-up of heat pumps. 

And now it is time. World leaders have gathered in Glasgow, we’re starting to hear a steady stream of soundbites and pledges. Although it’s too early to predict the outcome, it’s clear that the mood has changed significantly since Paris. But the challenge of the summit is a human one – and failure comes at great human and environmental cost. Like any meeting, it relies on the consensus of individual representatives and their teams; they have the facts, the data and research as a stark reminder of the need to act, but now it’s down to people to agree to commit to climate targets. Every country comes to the summit with a different experience, from island nations in imminent danger from rising sea levels to traditionally oil-rich countries seeking to reinvent their economies. It is no surprise, then, that previous negotiations have come down to the chaotic re-drafting of wording in the middle of the night. 

This human decision-making process is part of what drives our work at DG Cities. We believe that technology and innovation can be a force for good, but only when people are part of the solution – if nobody adopts a new transport system, for example, it will not take cars off the road. That is why we start by listening to people and taking their needs as the starting point. One of the ways we do this is through the DG Cities Research Community, a group of over 800 UK citizens who are interested in shaping research and insights on issues related to sustainability and the use of technology in towns and cities. Most recently we’ve asked our Research Community their views on smart homes and e-scooters - you can read about the outcomes of that research here. 

There are things that humans understand that computers can’t yet grasp. Our project D-Risk, for example, is learning from the public’s driving experiences to teach autonomous vehicles about the complexity of cities – a computer might find it difficult to make sense of a person dressed up as a traffic light, for instance, or smell the difference between smoke in the road and fog. Similarly, the COP26 summit relies on human intervention in the climate crisis. Technology is a valuable tool, but people must ultimately drive it.

Delivering on COP26 also means turning policy into action at a local level. As an organisation, DG Cities understands the nuances of the public sector; we came out of the Royal Borough of Greenwich and as a team, we have over 100 years of combined experience working within local authorities. It’s vital to understand the processes that can bring about change; not just addressing the headline challenges of doing ‘more with less’, but also the real nitty gritty details of everything from policy and governance to procurement and service delivery. These details count, and our insight adds tangible value - it sets us apart from other urban consultancy firms. 

So now at the summit, we rely on people. On the persuasiveness of their speeches and the outcome of conversations between our representatives in Glasgow – may they have positive, productive meetings. And while we hope that they have the skill, passion and determination to achieve what technology alone cannot, we remember that our behaviour, or collective actions as individuals, can still make a difference.

DG Cities

We help cities and communities harness the potential of technology, data and innovation to meet their carbon reduction targets. Our work spans net-zero housing, decarbonisation and fleet electrification, electric vehicle infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, public engagement and much more. Get in touch, follow us on Twitter or our blog to find out about our current projects.

Countdown to COP26 - the UK's Net-Zero Strategy

In the final of our Countdown to COP26 series, we’re looking at the UK’s newly published Net-Zero Strategy, which sets out for the first time how the UK Government plans to deliver on its commitment to decarbonise the UK by 2050.

This Strategy was published just last week, in the final stages of preparation for the landmark UN COP26 summit starting on Sunday in Glasgow. At the summit, the Prime Minister will be calling on other world economies to set out their own domestic plans for cutting emissions and ensure that this year's COP is a “turning point for humanity”. But will our own Net-Zero Strategy measure up? 

In this blog, HIba Alaraj takes a closer look at what the Strategy says about decarbonising transport and heating, and identifies some of the questions that, for us at DG Cities, remain unanswered. 

The UK recently published its strategy for achieving net-zero by 2050. The strategy highlights targets and ambitions for a variety of sectors and activities within the UK, including transport & heating.  

Transport greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK account for 27% of total GHG emissions. These are mainly generated by car travel. In response to this, the UK’s net-zero strategy will ban the sale of fossil fuel vans and cars by 2030 to reduce emissions by a minimum of 65% and and accelerate the transition to electric forms of transport. 

The ban itself is a positive step forward, however, vehicle electrification is challenging and for electric transport to be fully enabled, a number of other elements need to be put in place, in particular electric vehicle charging infrastructure. 

Currently, just 1% of all vehicles on UK roads are electric. With fossil-fuel-powered vehicles being phased out, this number needs to scale rapidly! The Net-Zero Strategy includes commitments to use £350m to build a competitive zero-emission vehicle supply chain and “ensure the UK automotive industry is at the forefront of the transition” - and a further £620m to sustain the rollout of charging infrastructure, focusing specifically on residential on-street charging and targeted plug-in grants. This will add to the £1.3bn pledged in November 2020 for charging infrastructure.

Here at DG Cities, we are fully supportive  of these commitments and investments. Up until now, local authorities using government funding have supported charge point installations through various means, with some regional models, such as the Source London network, also being established. But with the massive increase in scale that is necessary, what will delivery models look like going forward - and what role should local authorities be taking in that delivery?  

There are particular challenges that need to be solved in rural areas, such as the ability of the electricity distribution network to support new charge points. So how should the local authority’s role vary to take into account these types of challenges? These are questions that we are actively thinking about and working with councils to answer, so that we can help them to plan for the future.

But we need to remember that the lowest emitting journeys are those that are not done by private vehicle, whether it’s electric or otherwise. And as individuals, we can also help to reduce transport emissions with our daily commutes by choosing to walk or cycle, or for longer journeys, by choosing public transport.  

The net-zero strategy also sets targets for decarbonising heating, which accounts for a large portion of the UK’s emissions. For instance, housing GHG emissions account for 15% of the UK’s total GHG emissions, and this is mainly from heating and cooking. To reduce these emissions, the UK will ban the sale of gas boilers by 2035, and will instead encourage the installation of low carbon heating systems such as heat pumps in both homes and workplaces. The government aims to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028, in an effort to meet its net-zero commitments. But a major barrier to this target is the upfront cost of heat pumps. To mitigate this, the government will offer a £5,000 or £6,000 grant for households to upgrade their existing gas boilers with air or ground source heat pumps respectively. But this will only go part of the way towards the cost, and of course with ground source in particular,  there are other major operational barriers to consider. 

Another major issue is that the budget allocated to this scheme will only finance approximately  90,000 heat pumps in total. The gap between that number and 600,000 is substantial. To meet the target of installing 600,000 heat pumps per year, we need to urgently fund ways to lower the cost of installation for homeowners and we need a larger pool of money to ensure that a greater number of households are able to bridge that funding gap between gas and renewables. 

To ultimately reduce heating emissions within the private and public sectors, it’s crucial that we also ensure that buildings are properly insulated, and with a large proportion of the UK’s building stock being of solid wall construction and requiring more expensive external insulation, again, proper financial and technical support will be crucial.

Overcoming these barriers and filling in the policy gaps will be crucial to the delivery of the strategy and ensuring that the UK stays on target to meet its obligations. 

With COP26 just around the corner, there’s mounting pressure on global world leaders, including the UK, to present climate action plans that are clearly defined and impactful. Here at DG Cities, we will be keeping a close eye on the Net-Zero Strategy and, as ever, will be thinking of what we an organisation can do.