Electric Vehicles: Charging Points

(asked on 3rd March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

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


Answered by
Rachel Maclean Portrait
Rachel Maclean
This question was answered on 11th March 2020

Along with the private sector, the Government will invest an additional £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 that are available in any urban or rural areas across the UK.

Local authorities in rural areas are able to take advantage of the On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS), which assists them with the cost of installing chargepoints on residential streets. The funding available is for 75% of the capital costs of procuring and installing the chargepoint and an associated dedicated parking bay.

In October 2019, the Secretary of State wrote to all local authorities encouraging them to send their strategies for infrastructure deployment and to take advantage of ORCS funding. In January we announced that Government funding will be doubled to £10 million for the installation of chargepoints on residential streets next year. This could support as many as 3,600 chargepoints for those that do not have off-street parking.

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.

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