Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that electric vehicle charging infrastructure is made available in (a) Clacton and (b) the UK.

Zero emission motorists in Clacton can benefit from grants under the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme and Work Place Chargepoint Schemes and Tendring District Council can apply for funding under the On-street Residential Charging scheme.

We want to encourage private sector investment to build and operate a self-sustaining public network that is affordable, reliable and accessible.

Government funding, alongside private sector investment, has supported the installation of more than 22,500 places to charge, including 2,100 rapid devices– 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 , with the first tranche of funding launched in September 2019.