UK invests £400 million in electric car charging points

More than £400 million is being invested in electric car charging points in England over the next two years.

The Department for Transport’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund will distribute £381 million, while another £15 million is being invested in the On-Street Residential Charging Scheme.

The England-wide grants follow on from an initial investment of £20 million to install 1,000 EVCPs across nine LEVI pilot projects in Barnet, Dorset, Durham, Kent, Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Warrington.

These pilots are all progressing and West Suffolk Council recently signed up ubitricity for a £3.3 million framework to install around 100 electric car charging points on authority-owned land before the end of this year (Project ID: 22354018).

In Gedling, the LEVI funding is being used to install cables so that residents without driveways can charge electric vehicles as part of a £1.34 million scheme (Project ID: 22323050).

Councils charging up

In February, the DfT put in another £22 million to help 16 more councils and increase funding for the three LEVI pilots in Barnet, Durham and North Yorkshire.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority received £3 million and has just started procurement for a £10 million EVCP installation framework (Project ID: 22441233). The agreement is part of the West Yorkshire Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy and will be used by partner local authorities to recruit contractors.

In Durham, the LEVI funding has risen from £1.25 million to £3.1 million and the number of chargers to be installed has increased from 100 to 250 (Project ID: 22326259).

Other local authorities are also starting electric car charging points projects and bringing new deals into the procurement cycle.

A £1.6 million council framework to install chargers across Bradford began earlier this year (Project ID: 23118991), while Norfolk County Council is procuring a £1 million framework for installation of wall-mounted, pillar-style and back-to-back pillar-style EVCPs plus solar carports and rapid chargers (Project ID: 23076359).

Wales and Scotland

Outside of England, the roll-out of electric car charging points is also increasing.

In Wales, Andrew Scott has just started on a £1 million contract to install a charger array at Baglan Energy Park in Neath for the local county borough council (Project ID: 22332689).

In northern Scotland, the Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership and a host of councils recently appointed SP Energy Networks to a £945,000 framework to install EVCPs across the Highlands, Aberdeenshire and the city of Aberdeen (Project ID: 23002886).

Balfour boost

Contractors are getting ready to take up these opportunities and Balfour Beatty is entering the electric car charging points market. The group’s investments division has teamed up with charge point operator Urban Electric Networks to form Urban Fox, which will spend £60 million over the next 10 years installing 35,000 retractable on-street charge points across the UK.

Installed underground, the 7kW on-street charge points are fully retractable, leaving pavements clear when not in use, and have been trialled with the city councils in Oxford, Dundee and Plymouth and with Staffordshire County Council.

With the government committed to ending the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030, these projects will all be crucial to helping fulfil that pledge