‘Snobbery’ behind North’s lack of electric car chargers

THE Government wants more electric car chargers in the North as green drivers in richer areas have better access to them, a minister has said.

A £1.3billion fund to install chargers across the UK will be used to ensure there is a fair distribution, with more funding to address the problem, said Trudy Harrison, MP for Copeland and the minister overseeing the green overhaul of Britain’s transport.

Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference this week, the minister said she had been “pleasantly surprised” by the number of chargers in her Cumbria constituency but that they weren’t found in helpful places.

“They’re not necessarily in the best places, often they’re in the tourist areas, and often there’s a kind of almost snobbery about where chargers are.

“So the posh supermarkets often have the electric chargers. We’re getting there, we know it’s a problem, we’re putting many measures, and we’re hoping the spending review will be in a position to put even more of a charging infrastructure in place that will be fit for the needs of this change.”

Analysis of government data by energy company Bulb shows that the North of England has 15 per cent of the UK’S chargers while the South has 52 per cent, though the South also has around half of the country’s electric car drivers.

Figures from the charger-mapping company Zap-map show that Morrisons supermarkets are the most likely to have chargers, with 40 per cent of locations offering this, with Lidl and Asda the next two most likely. Just 12 per cent of Waitrose locations have chargers.

Melanie Shufflebotham, co-founder of Zap-map, said that the picture was “nuanced” because a lot of slower onstreet chargers, designed for use overnight, had been installed in London to help people without their own driveways, while faster chargers tended to be at motorway service stations.

“It’s not about just counting the total number of charge points – there are different chargers for different use cases.

“Regional comparisons are also important, but I think it is a nuanced picture, and there are areas of best practice outside the South,” she said.