Wigan is failing to meet public electric car chargers target

The Government has set a goal of 300,000 public electric vehicle chargers by 2030.

But Department of Transport figures reveal there are currently only 32,011 public chargers across the UK, of which just 5,974 are rapid chargers.

With 268,000 public chargers needed to hit the 300,000 target – and only 90 months to achieve this – local authorities need to grow their charger network at an annual rate of 32 per cent – but the majority are falling short of this.

According to UK car leasing comparison site LeaseLoco’s analysis, 228 of 375 local authorities missed the target over the past 12 months and more than a quarter expanded their network by less than 10 per cent in that time.

The research revealed 22 local authorities saw their public charging device network shrink over the past year – including Wigan.

A further 12 authorities did not add to their existing network of chargers.

In July 2021, Wigan had 42 public EV chargers, but in July 2022 that dropped by 7.1 per cent to 39. That leaves between 11 and 12 public EV charging ports per 100,000 of the Wigan borough population.

John Wilmot, CEO of LeaseLoco, said: “These latest figures reveal the stark reality, that as the UK transitions to electric vehicles, the charging infrastructure rollout is not progressing at a fast enough rate in many areas.

“The Government has a colossal task on its hands if it hopes to hit the 300,000 target by 2030 and create a charging infrastructure able to cope with the growth in EV ownership over the next decade.

“Although home charging will have a pivotal role to play, there will still be a huge reliance on the public charging network.

"And the ramifications on local economies of a substandard charging infrastructure could be severe.

“The public won’t be convinced to switch to electric early if they don’t believe the charging infrastructure can cope with demand.

"And the Government will have scored a huge own goal by declaring such an ambitious target and then coming up woefully short of it.”

Wigan Council leader Coun David Molyneux said efforts were being made to increase the number of chargers in the borough.

He said: “We understand that certainty over charging availability can be a major constraint to uptake and we are working hard to resolve this.

“The delivery and operation of Greater Manchester’s publicly funded EV charging infrastructure is co-ordinated by Transport for Greater Manchester.

“TfGM owns and operates 20 charge points at nine locations within Wigan borough on the Be.EV network.

“As of January 2022, we were aware of 53 publicly available EV charge points at 20 locations.

“This number has increased since then as more businesses are installing publicly available EV charge points.

“Smart charging points are required on all residential and commercial developments, in line with the minimum requirements set out.

“Residents are invited to help us to decide where to put new chargers using the map available on the TfGM website.