The British Parking Association commissioned its Parking 20:20 EV group to release a survey to local authorities, charge-point providers, car park operators and key stakeholders. The results found that nearly 70 per cent of the local authorities surveyed did not have the capital in their budgets to increase or install EV points and nearly 40 percent did not know if they could receive grants from the government towards installation.
33 per cent of the local authorities surveyed did not have any electric vehicle charging points. The average number of EV points being 19 per local authority, which were mainly located off-street. However, the survey found that the installation of over 1000 new EV points is planned over the next 3 years. This gives an average of 0.003 charging points per car parking space and 0.39 per car park.
When asked about any future plans for installation, just over half of authorities expressed plans to increase the number of EV charging points – and 16 per cent of those are dependent on funding. 34 per cent of authorities disclosed that they have no plans for any new installations.
Over all the survey showed significant imbalances across the country regarding EV charging points, with 25 authorities having no charging points. The BPA noted that they are “seeing tremendous technological advances in the Electric Vehicle (EV) market and our research demonstrates the lack of an adequate network of chargers of the right capacities in the right locations.”
Andrew Pester, chief executive of the BPA said: “We continue to see ambitious growth forecasts for electric vehicle take-up and the Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill should help – but we remain some way off having sufficient recharging infrastructure to enable plugging in to become the norm. New technologies and innovation are changing the way parking services are managed and delivered. We continue to inform and facilitate changes in the sector to improve parking services for all.”
