Refser Oslo for stomp charging station: – Unsustainable – E24

While the industry has to be patient while applications are at the Planning and Construction Agency in Oslo, it does not even have to apply for such charging station conversions in various other municipalities.

This is pointed out by the head of Virke Servicehandel, Iman Winkelman. He says they are “disappointed in the municipality of Oslo.”

– It is an unsustainable situation, especially compared to Oslo’s ambitions. The industry wants to contribute to ecological change, but the long processing time of cases is a barrier, Winkelman tells E24.

– We believe that it is a paradox that Oslo, which is going to be the environmental capital, spends so much time compared to other municipalities that do not have such ambitions, continues Virke -oppen.

The Urbanism and Urbanism Agency rejects the criticism. The responsible city council does the same.

I had to wait half a year

According to Winkelman, members of the service station industry have designated Oslo as “one of the worst municipalities in the country” when it comes to establishing charging services.

In several other places in the country, charging stations can be installed at service stations immediately, because the municipalities do not define charging offers as a measure that requires an application, or because the law uses access to so-called solutions of “fast track”. according to Virke.

Meanwhile, approval of charging stations can take many months. Here are some examples of ST1 / Shell applications:

• Etterstad: The frame application was submitted 04/15/20, approved 07/03/20.
• Bjølsen: The framework application was submitted on 08.05.20, approved on 08.09.20.
• Kastellet: The framework application was submitted on April 28, 2020 and approved on October 23, 2020.

– You cannot have to wait up to six months for a very simple application to be processed to convert parts of gas station space into fast charging stations. It should be obvious, Winkelman believes.

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“A plug in the system”

– Actually, there is a difference between installing a commercial building and fast chargers on existing land. We cannot say that it will take so long to decide on such an application.

– How long do you think it should take?

– Some municipalities do not even have application requirements. In principle, this should be relatively straightforward, also in Oslo. Remember that a cargo offer is added to an existing area. Our starting point is that the Planning and Construction Agency should give the green light in two weeks.

– Where is the problem?

– We believe that the Planning and Construction Agency does not have sufficient capacity or competence to process these requests. There is a plug somewhere in the system.

Agency: processed everything on time

The agency has received criticism and examples of cases that have taken several months to process. All three have been prosecuted within the time limit of the law, says department director Hanne Høybach:

– Construction cases that require a municipality waiver have a case processing period of 12 weeks from when the request was completed; that is, the applicants had submitted all the necessary documents, Høybach writes in an email to E24.

When the calculation of the case processing time from the applications was completed, the three applications took four days, two weeks and 11 weeks to process, respectively, according to Høybach.

– The three cases E24 is targeting are all requests with waivers and all have been processed within the case processing timeframe. Therefore, we cannot see that Winkelman’s claims that there should be a plug in the system are in line with reality.

The City Development Agency defends the use of time

Virke’s criticism also bounces off the acting urban development council, Arild Hermstad.

It has not responded to E24’s specific question on whether it believes that the case processing time in the specific examples is acceptable, or whether Oslo may consider exempting charging stations from the obligation to apply.

However, he defends the agency for which he has the maximum responsibility and maintains that they process requests for charging stations “as quickly as possible.”

– I am very concerned that we have good loading options and, therefore, we have, among other things, a new parking regulation pending consultation that proposes that all new parking spaces in construction projects have loading options, continues Hermstad.