Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans are in place to improve the availability of charging facilities for electric cars in the south east of England.

The Government has supported charging infrastructure in the South East over a number of years. This includes £1.3m of public charging infrastructure in South East England through the National Infrastructure Grant Schemes, almost £10m for two Go Ultra Low Cities schemes in Milton Keynes and Oxford and almost £1m for rapid charging for taxis in Oxford, Slough and Cambridge.

The Government now has in place a variety of UK-wide grant funding schemes to assist with the cost of installing chargepoints in motorists homes, on residential streets, at workplaces and across the wider public estate. In addition, the Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (£200m new Government investment, to be matched by private investors), announced at Budget last year, will accelerate the roll-out of charging infrastructure by providing access to finance to companies that deliver chargepoints.

The Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill gives the Government new powers to improve the provision of electric vehicle infrastructure, including powers to regulate technical standards of infrastructure to ensure easy compatibility with vehicles, to ensure provision of data on chargepoint locations and their availability, and to require provision of infrastructure at motorway service areas and large fuel retailers. Government’s wider role in the decarbonisation of road transport will be set out in the forthcoming Road to Zero strategy.