Today, Monday 12 August, the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, announced an additional £2.5 million for charging infrastructure on residential streets.
Energy Saving Trust administers the On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme on behalf of the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV). It provides funding for local authorities to install chargepoints on streets without off-street parking, overcoming a major barrier to electric vehicle uptake. The funding covers 75% of the costs of procurement and installation of chargepoints, subject to meeting the grant criteria.
2019 has seen an unprecedented demand from local authorities for a share of the funding pot. This high demand has led OZEV to increase the total funding available by £2.5 million up to April 2020, doubling the current pot to £5 million for this financial year.
Between April 2018 and March 2019, 23 local authorities across the UK were awarded £1.5 million in funding from the scheme. Across the five months of the current financial year, sufficient funding has already been allocated for the installation of over 1,000 chargepoints and requests for funding from the 2019/20 pot were approaching £2.5 million.
Doubling the funding available to local authorities is great news, opening up the benefits of electric vehicles and convenient and cost-effective overnight charging to more people, wherever they park.
Mike Thornton, group director of Operations at Energy Saving Trust commented: “We welcome OZEV’s announcement today of an additional £2.5 million pounds in support of the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme. An estimated 25% of cars are parked on-street overnight and on-street chargepoints enable their owners to access convenient, cost-effective charging on their doorstep. The switch to ultra-low emission vehicles is essential to reduce emissions and improve air quality in line with Road to Zero’s ambitions.”
Find out more…
- find out more about developing an EV charging infrastructure
- more about the On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme
- see our guide to electric vehicle charging