Gosport council looks at bringing in new electric vehicle charging points

Gosport Borough Council will decide on installing 12 EVCPs at next week's community board meeting.

Demand for electric vehicles is expected to increase due to the government's proposed phasing-out of new petrol or diesel vehicles by 2030.

Councillor Philip Raffaelli, Chairman of the Community Board said: ‘Clearly the way ahead is increasingly electric vehicles so we need to provide charging points.

‘Currently in Gosport car parks we have two which were installed by Hampshire County Council.

‘The government is clearly trying to boost that and rightly so and we’re strongly keen on providing them ourselves.

‘What we’re looking at is getting up to a dozen more spread across various car parks in Gosport - we’re looking to get the fast charging ones.’

Currently, there are 20 EVCPs in the borough - 18 of which are located in private car parks outside supermarkets and petrol stations - the remaining 2 are in Walpole Car Park.

The council says the most viable car parks to install more would be Pebble Beach, No.2 Battery West, Green Lane, Beach Road and Marine Parade - each will receive two charging points.

The cost of purchasing and installing the charging points are around £5000 per unit with annual maintenance costing £150.

The EVCP companies may fully fund the charging points, part fund them or could be entirely funded by the council.

This comes after the government backtracked their national policy proposal for all large commercial car parks to have at least one EVCP.

Now the Department for Transport said it will only be a requirement for new or refurbished commercial premises.

Portsmouth is in the process of installing almost 100 on-street charging points in residential areas, and also looking at bringing in extra points for electric taxis.