NHS adds to its EV charge points

The roll out of electric vehicle (EV) charging points across NHS Forth Valley’s hospitals and health centres continues, with tariffs also being introduced at some sites.

Sixteen chargers will be switched on in the patient and visitor car park at Forth Valley Royal Hospital on Tuesday.

There are also plans to install a number of public EV charging points at Clackmannanshire Community Healthcare Centre.

This brings the total of public EV charging points installed across local hospitals to 36, with additional EV chargers installed to support the health board’s growing fleet of electric vehicles. The development supports the national drive to install charging infrastructure across the country and meet the target to have a 100 per cent fleet of NHS vehicles by 2025 (for cars and small vans) and 2030 (for larger vehicles).

The publicly available charging EV points at FVRH are part of the Charge Place Scotland network and will operate on a metered pay per use basis, in line with the tariffs in place for council run EV charging points. Standard tariffs for electricity will also come into force at the public EV charging points already at Stirling Health and Care Village and Falkirk Community Hospital on May 2.

Derek Jarvie, NHS Forth Valley’s Head of Climate Change and Sustainability, said:“introducing EV charging points across local healthcare facilities and switching to electric fleet vehicles is part of a wider drive to reduce our carbon footprint and support local staff, patients and visitors to use greener, more sustainable forms of transport.

“Efforts to remove all petrol and diesel fuelled cars from our fleet by 2025 continue and we now have 46 fully electric fleet vehicles with a further 15 on order. The remaining fleet vehicles will be replaced with electric alternative when they reach their replacement dates.”

There are 16 EV public charging points at Forth Valley Royal Hospital; 12 at Falkirk Community Hospital; and six at Stirling Health and Care Village.