A total of 2400 electric vehicle chargepoints will be installed across 19 local authority areas in England as part of government plans to ramp up the UK’s charging network.
The new chargers will be funded by £56 million of public and industry funding, as part of an expansion of the Department for Transport’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) and On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS). initiatives.
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The DfT says that the funding will help give councils the resources to ‘develop in-house expertise’ to develop coordinated charge point plans, and to work with private charging firms. It's all part of the DfT's plan to install 300,000 EV chargers across England by 2030, when the sale of most new petrol and diesel cars and vans will be banned.
The funding will go to16 new pilot schemes for EV chargers in local authority areas, while three existing LEVI pilot schemes in Barnet, Durham and North Yorkshire will all be expanded.
The £56 million investment package for the pilot schemes is comprised of £22 million of government funding, £17 million of private funding and £2 million from public funds across local authorities. There is also a new £8 million LEVI Capability Fund, to help local authorities achieve ‘sustainable growth’ of their EV charging plans.
Finally, there is a further £7 million of funding for the OSRC scheme, raising the total funding for the project this year to £37 million. The DfT says that initiative has so far delivered 3000 chargers, with 10,000 more planned.
Transport and Decarbonisation Transport Minister Jesse Norman said the commitment would “lead to thousands of new chargers being installed, and plans for tens of thousands extra in due course, so that more people than ever can make the transition to using EVs.”
The 16 new local authority areas to secure funding for new charge points are Buckinghamshire, Cumbria, Hacknet, Harborough, Hounslow, Lancashire, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Rotherham, Sunderland, Waltham Forest, West Midlands, West Sussex, West Yorkshire and York.
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