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 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.

However, the UK’s picture overall is also very encouraging. 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 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.’