Over half of local authorities have no residential charging strategy in place

A year on from launching their Electric Streets of Britain campaign, Vauxhall have updated their research, revealing that councils are making slow progress in keeping up with the demand for on-street EV charging.

A Freedom of Information request by Vauxhall found that 56.5% of the 267 local authorities who responded, still do not have a published, on-street residential charging strategy in place, a slight improvement on last year when a similar FOI request revealed that seven out of ten councils had no such strategy.

Vauxhall have also released data based on public submissions to the Electric Streets website, in which drivers highlight locations in which they would like to see on-street charging.  This saw more than 11,500 streets across the country identified as sites which the 13,000 respondents felt were in need of charging infrastructure.

James Taylor, Managing Director, Vauxhall, said: ‘On-street residential charging is critical to the adoption and acceleration of electric vehicles. Thanks to the public, we already know of over 11,000 roads where we need to install on-street chargers today to make it more convenient for EV drivers and remove a barrier for those wanting to switch to electric.’

The 267 councils who responded to the FOI have, between them, installed over 15,000 on-street chargers and plan to install a further 8,000 over the 12 months.

It’s not a great surprise however to see that many of the most productive councils in this respect are disproportionately located in London.

14 of the top 20 councils in terms of installations are to be found in the capital, while 10 of the 20 councils to have seen the biggest increase of charge points year-on-year, are also there.

Extraordinarily, one in five of all the on-street charge points in the UK have been installed in the London Boroughs of Southwark and Barnet

We have recently reported on Coventry’s enthusiastic installation of charging infrastructure and the city scores well in the Vauxhall metric too, with 1,340 on-street chargers recorded, the highest number outside the capita and 40% up on last year.

The Local Authorities with the greatest public demand for on-street electric vehicle charging, according to Vauxhall Electric Streets of Britain database submissions are:

• Leeds 182
• Birmingham 178
• Glasgow City 168
• Liverpool 155
• Bristol, City of 154
• County Durham 150
• Wirral 137
• Sheffield 131
• City of Edinburgh 119
• Cardiff 117