West Sussex has become one of the first councils to announce its funding share from the latest round of the Department for Transport's On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme, winning a cash allocation of £1.8m.
The money was awarded to the West Sussex Chargepoint Network - thought to be the largest roll-out of electric vehicle (EV) charging points by a UK local authority. The network is providing EV chargepoints for residents in areas which have no off-street parking.
The award is to part-fund up to 450 on-street chargepoints and 100 in public car parks. The remaining installation costs will be covered by EV chargepoint company Connected Kerb, one of the UK’s leading providers of EV charging infrastructure solutions.
West Sussex County Council, Adur and Worthing Councils, Arun District Council, Crawley Borough Council, Horsham District Council and Mid Sussex District Council have signed a contract with Connected Kerb to install and maintain thousands of new chargepoints across the county. Chichester District Council has recently joined the initiative.
A West Sussex County Council spokesperson told Highways : 'Connected Kerb will be funding the remaining installation costs and will be responsible for all servicing and maintenance of the chargepoints, plus the customer support.
'Most of the chargepoint revenue will be returned to Connected Kerb to cover its costs, but a proportion of the revenue will be returned to the landowners - eg the County Council or the relevant district or borough council where the chargepoints are located.'
Joy Dennis, the county council's cabinet member for highways and transport, said: 'This extra funding award by the Department for Transport is excellent news and will further boost what is already the UK’s largest roll-out of electric vehicle chargepoints by a local authority. We’re working with our district and borough council partners to make even more chargepoints available across the county to encourage people to consider making the switch to electric vehicles.'
Chris Pateman-Jones, CEO of Connected Kerb, said: 'We are delighted to be working with West Sussex County Council on this landmark project which will make EV charging more accessible for people without driveways and boost our efforts to support sustainable transport.'
Proposed locations from the initial phase of the on-street chargepoint rollout can be viewed on the Connected Kerb website.
The initial 450 on-street chargepoints will be going through the Traffic Regulation Order statutory consultation within the next month.
