Desperate need for electric car chargers in Walsall
Electric car charging points are to pop up around Walsall as the council looks to hit carbon neutral targets in the coming years.
The authority has bid for around £250,000 Government cash to install 35 chargers – or 70 sockets – by 2023 with areas where home owners don’t have drives or garages being targeted.
All four Black Country councils developed a strategy to support the projected 42,500 electric vehicles expected on the regions roads by 2030.
In Walsall 163 standard sockets – 83 chargers – are required by 2025 but figures show Walsall only currently has 19 chargers in the whole borough.
Steven Edwards, principal transport planner, said: “This is a big issue. In order to ensure transport is able to properly de-carbonise, we need to be able to get vehicles on the road and get people to want to own the vehicles to enable them to de-carbonise and that at the moment is electric vehicles.
“In order for people to enjoy the mobility they have, there is a need for electric vehicles to step into the breach.
“But we can’t just plug all this in 2030 and hope it is fine. We need to try to get some of this in in advance.
“The Black Country boroughs collectively are not the most advanced on this agenda to date compared with others around the country.
“But we are getting started and we have some funding we are hoping we are going to be able to draw down from in the not too distant future.
“The big area we need to intervene in is residential charging particularly in the areas of the borough where the housing stock is old, outdated and built in the era before the motor car and where those people can’t park on a driveway.
“Money is available for this from the on-street residential charge point scheme and that is aimed at charging being installed in areas where housing stock doesn’t support that activity.
“The funding will give us 75 per cent of the cost.
“The bid submitted to the department of transport this week allows us to install 35 electric vehicle chargers or 70 sockets at a cost of just over £338,000.
“The cost of the fund is around £250,000. That will give us 42.9 per cent of the required chargers we need by 2025.
“So there will be more work to be done. Once we’ve got funding, we will move to a public consultation with residents and businesses near to where the chargers are going in.”
