Councils in the UK are set to install more than 16,500 EV charge points during 2023, according to data from British Gas.
There are, however, some discrepancies in the regions where the highest number of charge points will be installed. London, East of England, North West, South West and Wales will all see a doubling in the number of installed charge points, whilst the number of publicly available charge points in the Midlands and Scotland will only increase by 67% and 40% respectively. Further, 24 UK councils currently have no plans to install EV charge points over the next 12 months. Evidently there is a real risk of the current EV infrastructure divide being further entrenched, with certain parts of the country suffering from a new kind of fuel poverty caused by a lack of accessible electric vehicle charging for those who do not have access to private charging infrastructure.
The UK Government has taken some steps to seek to address a lack of investment by local authorities in publicly available charging infrastructure through the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme, the Local EV Infrastructure Fund and the Rapid Charging Fund.
In addition, local authorities are able to call upon the Workplace Charging Scheme to assist with the electrification of their own fleets.
