Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of charging points for electric vehicles in rural areas.

Along with the private sector, the Government will invest £1 billion in charging infrastructure, ensuring that everyone is within 30 miles of a rapid charging station. We are already investing nearly £1.5bn? between April 2015 and March 2021 to support the transition to zero emission motoring and have put in place a range of grant schemes to support the installation of charging infrastructure, available in any urban or rural areas of the UK, including Northern Ireland.

Under the Government’s Go Ultra Low City Scheme, £22.9m has been allocated to support the installation of infrastructure in several UK cities and wider surrounding rural areas. Last year work commenced to determine a vision for a core rapid charger network on England’s strategic road network and we aim to report on this in Spring 2020. Our jointly funded £400 million Chargepoint Infrastructure Investment Fund’s first investment round, worth a total of £70 million, will ensure the delivery of a further 3,000 rapid charging devices by 2024, more than doubling the current number of rapid charging devices.