Over 12,500 streets across the UK have now been flagged by drivers as urgently needing on-street EV charging, according to new figures from Vauxhall’s Electric Streets of Britain campaign.
Launched in August 2023, the initiative was created to support the 40% of UK households without a driveway, giving them a way to register local demand for charging via electricstreets.co.uk.
Requests are shared with Vauxhall’s partners – char.gy, Connected Kerb and SureCharge – and made available to councils through the NEVIS database to guide local charging infrastructure plans.
New research from Vauxhall and low-carbon consultancy Cenex shows steady progress. As of August 2025, 22.9% of households are now within a four-minute walk of a charge point, up from 19.6% last year. That increase equates to an additional 300,000 households with near-home charging access, placing supply around 18 months ahead of demand.
Some of the strongest improvements came in previously underserved areas: the Isles of Scilly jumped from 0% coverage in 2024 to nearly 66% today, while Redbridge and Wrexham recorded growth of 39.1% and 26.1% respectively.
In total, 29 local authorities already have enough charge points to meet anticipated 2030 demand.
That said, the research highlights that 243 councils still have low coverage relative to EV ownership, with rural parts of Wales, Scotland and eastern England notably behind.
Nationally, only two-thirds of the chargers needed to keep pace with EV uptake were installed over the past year, leaving an estimated shortfall of 110,000 near-home chargers by 2030.
Freedom of Information requests show the proportion of councils with a dedicated EV charging officer has risen from 31% in 2023 to 51% in 2025, while the number of councils installing at least one on-street charger has grown from 31% to 44%.
The UK’s public charging network has also expanded rapidly, with Zapmap recording a 56% increase in devices since the end of 2023 – from 53,865 to over 84,000. However, regional disparity persists, with 30% of chargers located in London.
Steve Catlin, Managing Director, Vauxhall said: ‘The country has made great strides in growing its electric vehicle infrastructure since Electric Streets of Britain launched in 2023. Not only have we seen a huge rise in the number of public chargers, but more importantly their installation is increasingly being deployed tactically for drivers who need them on a local level.
‘While the ongoing rise in councils who have policy officers dedicated to overseeing charging is encouraging, the 12,500 registrations we have received to Electric Streets shows there is no silver bullet to provide a quick fix for drivers. We need to make sure all parties are pulling in the same direction to maintain the momentum we have seen over the past two years.’
Robert Evans, CEO, Cenex added: ‘It has been a year since we collaborated with Vauxhall to put forward better metrics to measure the delivery of public EV infrastructure. Using these more relevant, actionable, scalable and measurable metrics, it is great to see the progress made in the last 12 months and assess at a granular level whether current public and private plans are helping meet the needs of residents and drivers.’
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