Over 500 electric vehicle (EV) chargepoints are to be installed in Barnet, North London, due to new funding from the On-Street Residential Charge Point Scheme (ORCS).
Barnet Council secured £3.5 million from the Office for Zero Emission’s ORCS, which funds 75% of the costs of local authorities providing public chargepoints for residents who don’t have off-street parking.
The remaining 25% of the costs for Barnet Council’s rollout will either be funded by the council, a commercial partner or a part-funding agreement, reaching a total project value of £4.65 million.
The 34 streets to receive chargepoints as part of the rollout have been selected based on resident requests, suitability for installing on-street chargepoints and where off-street parking is not possible.
“As electric cars continue to grow in popularity, I’m glad to see the council taking action at the scale that is needed, driving down emissions and cleaning up the air,” transport minister Trudy Harrison said.
Previous research has showed that uptake of ORCS funding has been slow, with it revealed that as of 2018, only five local authorities had taken advantage of the ORCS.
Additionally, research released in January by Centrica which was sourced from Freedom of Information requests found that over the next four years, only 9,317 on-street chargepoints are planned for installation by local authorities.
This breaks down to just 35 chargers per council, with 126 councils across the UK having no concrete plans to install more EV chargers than they currently have between now and the end of 2025.
However, some local authorities are rolling out EV chargers, with Milton Keynes Council securing £1.1 million in September, while Connected Kerb has been working with the London Borough of Lambeth to roll out EV chargers and Birmingham City Council is rolling out 394 fast and rapid chargepoints around the city in partnership with ESB EV Solutions.