The research was carried out by intelligentcarleasing.com to compare every single local authority in the UK, with a total of 433 councils presented with freedom of information requests in the last quarter of 2014 on how many purely electric cars they own, lease or manage.

The list – available here – shows that out of all councils who have responded to date (>95% of those surveyed) over one in three has at least one electric vehicle within their fleet. On average there are 1.23 EVs per local authority.

The research also shows that 80% of the top five councils for EV adoption are in Scotland, with Intelligent Car Leasing saying this could tie in with the Scottish government’s green initiative to have 100% of electricity demand met via renewable sources by 2020.

The 10 councils with the highest number of EVs are as follows:

Pete McAllister, who conducted the study, commented: ‘With one in three local councils adopting electric vehicles on some level it paints an encouraging picture. I think as electricity production in the UK becomes more fuelled by renewables the number of councils adopting electric powered transport will vastly increase.’