London Borough of Barnet to install 500 EV charge points

Barnet Council says they have secured over £3.5Mn (about €4.1Mn) in grant funding to deliver 500 on-street electric vehicle charge points by November 2022. The North London borough currently claims the second-highest EV ownership rate in London.

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The Office of Zero Emissions Vehicles (OZEV) grant will see the charge points installed in 34 of Barnet’s residential streets by November 2022. The £3.5m coming through the On-Street Residential Charge Point Scheme (ORCS) is also the largest sum awarded to any Local Authority, so Barnet.

The Council expects the money to cover 75% of the expected cost – the maximum available through the grant scheme. Accordingly, Barnet expects to spend £4.65m installing the 500 electric vehicle charge points. The remaining 25% of costs will be funded by the Council, a commercial partner, or a part-funding agreement.

The 34 streets across Barnet have been selected based on resident requests, suitability for installing on-street charge points and where off-street parking is not possible, so the Council.

Barnet has yet to disclose how many or which companies will supply the on-street charge points.

However, this latest project is phase one of what the Council hopes to be “an ongoing programme to support Barnet Council’s Electric Vehicle Strategy.”

Earlier attempts to provide charging dates from 2019 when Barnet was reportedly working with CityEV to install 40 lamp post charge points as part of a trial reported.

The On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS) is one of three UK funding schemes to increase charging infrastructure across the country. The government had renewed funding with £20 million in February this year. The new funding was double the investment made last year and four times in 2019.

The ORCS is flanked by the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme (EVHS), which provides up to £350 towards a home charge point.

Closing the triangle is the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS), also open to small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and the charity sector.

Update 7 October 2022:

The London Borough of Barnet has started work to install over 500 new EV charge points, following the above-mentioned award of a £3.5m grant to fund the new chargers last year. The six-month installation, in partnership with Trojan Energy, will see 510 charge points installed on 34 residential streets across the borough.

barnet.gov.uk, barnet.gov.uk (How to request a charge point), update: barnet.gov.uk