Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen has announced a multimillion-pound investment to expand the number of public EV charging points available across Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool.
The metro mayor is providing £2m that will see the number of publicly available chargers increase from 191 to 336, representing the region’s biggest ever increase in EV charging points.
The first phase of the rollout will see chargers installed in 32 public car parks across Tees Valley – boosting the number of available charging points by 75%.
Houchen said: “For too long there has been a lack of charging points available in public car parks and many of those that have been installed over the past few years are broken, limiting the number of charging options for local people and ultimately deterring people from making the switch away from petrol and diesel.
“I’m determined to fix this so that local people have access to good quality, reliable and abundant public charging points.
“That’s why I am making our biggest investment to date in charging points, which will deliver the biggest expansion of public chargers ever in Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool.
EB Charging has been procured to supply, operate and maintain the points. Installation is due to begin early this year, with the first 21 sites expected to be up and running by the early summer.
Studies are being carried out as to which other car parks across the region could also form part of this first phase of installations, leading to up to 40 sites benefitting from the new charging points.
