More EV charging points coming to Bury

Plans are under way to install many more EV charging points at locations across the borough of Bury.

Council leaders want the number to rise substantially, as currently there are only 15 electric vehicle charging devices per 100,000 population in Bury - a quarter of the UK average.

The council recently awarded Be.EV a concessionary contract to install rapid charging infrastructure on council land in areas where is a high turnover of vehicles, e.g. town centres. This could bring 100 charging points to Bury, with 15-25 planned for the next 24 months.

However, the council wishes to have many more points installed in areas that better serve residents who do not have access to off-street parking, e.g. their own drive.

To enable this, it plans to use £2m of combined funding from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) and the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund.

This would match fund private investment from a supplier to significantly increase publicly available EVCI.

Members of the council’s cabinet, when they meet on 12 July, will be asked to seek a supplier to install, operate and maintain a network of EV charging points aimed at supporting residents who do not have access to off-street parking. The successful supplier will keep the income from the network and operate it independently from the council.

Councillor Alan Quinn, cabinet member for the environment, climate change and operations, said: “The council has a target of being carbon neutral by 2038. To achieve this goal, we need to significantly reduce carbon emissions, much of which come from petrol and diesel cars. One way to reduce these emissions is for people to transition to electric vehicles, which have zero emissions at the tailpipe and a reduced carbon impact overall.”

ENDS

Press release issued: 7 July 2023.