London receive £35.7m to install thousands more charge points

London boroughs have been awarded a share of £35.7 million in funding from the Government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) scheme.

The Government cash will help the capital meets its target of 40,000-60,000 electric vehicle (EV) charge points by 2030.

London is already leading the way, with nearly 13,000 electric charge points – around one third of the UK’s total – an increase of over 200% since 2019.

An additional £3m of Capability funding will fund officers dedicated to supporting delivery of charge points across the boroughs.

Charge points will be installed to meet the needs of local communities, with a particular focus on supporting those who do not have access to off-street parking. 

The funding will also be used to enable cross-border collaboration between boroughs when procuring and delivering charge points.

London currently has one charge point for every four registered EVs in the city, compared with the national average of one charge point for every 12 vehicles.

London also has the most public rapid charge points by volume and share of any European city.

Since 2016 the Mayor of London and Transport for London (TfL) have delivered more than 300 rapid charge points with 100 new sites being tendered to the market in 2023, with additional sites to follow.

All this complements more than 500 rapid charge points that have been delivered by the private sector, with 10,000 slow-to-fast chargers also installed across London since 2016.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: “London is leading the way in the delivery of electric vehicle charge points and infrastructure, and this funding will help ensure that we can reach our ambition to have at the very least one electric vehicle charge point on every street where needed.

“This is a bold ambition, and we will only achieve this by working closely with London boroughs and TfL to ensure public charge points are installed where they are most needed, making it easier, more accessible and more convenient for Londoners to switch to electric vehicles.”

The LEVI funding replaces OZEV’s Go Ultra Low City Scheme (GULCS), where London boroughs, with the support of the Mayor and TfL, came together to design a programme which delivered over 4,200 charge points, 19 car club charge points, three community charging hubs and eight rapid charge points, far exceeding the initial target of 2,150.

The Government expanded its LEVI pilot in February, with 16 more councils receiving funding to deliver new charge points.