Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department plans to take to support the installation of public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in Southport constituency.

To ensure that the transition to electric vehicles takes place in every part of the country, the Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) fund will support local authorities to work with industry to transform the availability of charging for drivers without off-street parking.

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, which includes Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council, has been allocated £9.65 million in capital funding, and £737,000 in capability (resource) funding through the LEVI Fund. This will enable strategic local provision of public EV infrastructure, particularly for those EV drivers without off-street parking.

Local Authorities can also apply to the £15 million On-Street Residential Chargepoint scheme for support. To date, Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council has not applied for these grants.

Data on electric vehicle charging devices in the UK, held by the Department for Transport, is sourced from the electric vehicle charging platform Zapmap. Charging devices not recorded on Zapmap are not included and the accurate number of charging devices may be higher than recorded in these figures. As at 1^st April 2023, the Department estimates that there are 12 public charging devices in Southport constituency from this data.