Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to help ensure that more public charging points are provided for electronic vehicles.
We want to encourage private sector investment to build and operate a self-sustaining public network that is affordable, reliable and accessible.
Government funding and leadership, alongside private sector investment, has supported the installation of more than 21,000 public chargepoints, 2,100 of which are rapid – creating one of the largest networks in Europe. In August the Secretary of State announced that funding for this year’s on street residential charging scheme, which offers grants to local authorities to support investment at a local level, would be doubled from £2.5 to £5 million. Highways England has also committed £15m to ensure there are chargepoints (rapid where possible) every 20 miles on 95% of the Strategic Road Network by 2020.
This is in addition to the £400m Chargepoint Infrastructure Investment Fund announced at the Autumn budget in 2017.